thus Brett Lymn spake:
> On Wed, Aug 30, 2006 at 02:32:39PM +0200, Timo Schoeler wrote:
>> i didn't write that it's of use for 3d accellerators. it's the blob 
>> thing that's the topic, regardless of whether it powers an USB coffee 
>> cup heater or a sixteen channel VR screen replacing a good, old sgi Onyx2.
>>
> 
> There are two notable hardware device types that use blobs:
> 
> 1) Wireless networking
> 2) 3d accelerators
> 
> To some extent it is being tried with wired networking but the
> competition in that space makes it harder to dominate the market.

you are correct, but that's not what i'm talking about; i'm talking 
about the principle itself -- accepting blobs or not to accept blobs. 
that is independent from the device that /would/ need a blob to be 
supported.

once again: i'm talking about the *principle thing*.

>> who introduced gaming? you did. it's not about the application nor the 
>> device the driver's being written for.
> 
> Sorry you are incorrect.

no, i am not, given the many times repeated fact that i'm talking about 
the *principle thing* (repeated in this mail as in my earlier ones).

> The application drives the demand for the
> facilities the hardware provides.  The entertainment industry
> (including computer gaming) is currently growing quite strongly. 

yes, and full of open source games and free online communities. (if you 
see the irony, feel free to keep it.)

> This
> growth is driving the development of faster/better hardware and
> driving the cost of that hardware down.

yes. sure. but that doesn't legitimate forcing everybody in the world to 
use a) your hardware, b) your blob, c) the combination of this.

>> it's a *political thing*. if you choose to use an open source OS it's 
>> more than superlame when then developers start to accept binary drivers. 
>> it's contrary to the OSs' 'karma', 'mission' or whatever you want to 
>> call it.
> 
> That looks like an awfully emotion laden statement there.

no, it's not about emotions, it's about the thing the NetBSD Foundation 
(or any other project with certain goals) does.

NetBSD is an Open Source OS, BSD licensed (nothing new). but it'd be new 
to me (and many others) if that includes /forced/ use of blobs.

you are forced in the moment there's no other choice than using a blob 
to be able to use a certain device.

> Basically,
> what you are doing is making any potential demand for a vendors
> product invisible to them.  You say "oh, I _would_ buy your product
> but you need to spend money on releasing documents first" (yes it does
> cost money to do this).  Talk is cheap.

yes, and when 10,000 people email/write/phone them and tell them 'hey 
guys, i'd like to buy blablabla, but blablabla' then you have much more 
impact than buying 1,000,000 of blablabla and STFU.

> If you buy the product and
> use the blob then you are a visible component of the vendors market
> share - they can see that they have had X downloads of the driver for
> OS foo,

usually there's the windows driver and a linux binary. usually 'other 
OSs' use the Linux bin (have a look at java, btw) to somehow extract the 
blob and use it. so the vendor sees additional linux downloads. great 
for NetBSD!

> it could (maybe) be possible to apply some leverage to the
> vendor to say "look, we use your products, you make m***y from us, you
> could make more if you let us develop our own drivers".  It may or may
> not work, I have seen that go both ways.

so you'd try to convince ATI to invest x million dollars to write a 
driver (blob) for NetBSD (and maybe -- hopefully! -- other OSs) to gain 
y millions (highly exaggerated) in sales, where x > y?

:D

>> (btw: last time i had time to do computer gaming (!) was at least a 
>> decade ago. i'd rather buy a PS3, X360 or something else (PowerPC 
>> driven, yummy!) than using a PeeCee with all it's horrible architectural 
>> stuff for gaming.)
>>
> 
> There is a delicious irony there that you seem to be advocating that
> it's not good enough to accept close binaries for drivers yet you are
> willing to buy an even more closed architecture to the extent that the
> vendor is actively and aggressively attempting to keep the
> architecture closed.

there's nothing like irony in it because I DON'T WANT A GAME CONSOLE TO 
RUN NETBSD WHEN I USE IT FOR GAMING.

if i really don't know what to do with my time i can a) buy a game 
console and play or b) (if i have much much more time) try to port 
and/or install NetBSD/other OSs on it.

got the point? i'm talking about a totally other thing here.

>> that's giving up. that's murdering everything else but i386 and maybe 
>> some other archs backed up by their vendors (IBM/Power.org PowerPC, 
>> Sun/Fujitsu et al. SPARC, HP PA-RISC, MIPS, ARM) in a propritary way.
>>
> 
> Again, that is emotive.

ah, i see, it's emotive to follow NetBSDs goal as an OS that runs on 
many platforms, ya? that's not emotive. do you know the definition of 
the word 'emotive' and the metaphysics of it? i doubt it, strongly. 
don't use emotive as a buzzword, there are better ones and you will 
really help bullshit bingo players to get their game to an end avoiding 
'emotive' as nobody bets on it.

> Do what you like, I have been actually
> running linux (due to driver requirements) to do my gaming.

well, that's your problem.

> I have
> seen vast improvements in both vendor driver support and native game
> support.

it'd be even better, even 'excellent' running windows.

> This is just an example how demand can drive improvements
> even for blob vendors.

no, that's just test balloons how they are accepted by the 'community'.

>> http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics&PHPSESSID=bdce7acebd3cb92bebc3e7a6dbe4dd29
>>
> 
> Nice but hardly at the same level as a recent ATI or nVidia offering,
> not useful to me.

not useful to you, but that's your own problem.

it's damn useful to people who want to run Open Source software and 
nothing else.

i really hope you get the point. others already did.

if not, i strongly recommend taking some classes on dialectics of 
discussion or similar.

cheers,

-- 
Timo Schoeler | http://riscworks.net/~tis | timo.schoeler@riscworks.net
RISCworks -- Perfection is a powerful message
ISP | POWER & PowerPC afficinados | Networking, Security, BSD services
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Frankie says: Relax