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Re: Open Source 3-D NVIDIA Drivers in the Works

__/ [ Brandon J. Van Every ] on Tuesday 26 December 2006 20:35 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> __/ [ Brandon J. Van Every ] on Tuesday 26 December 2006 11:21 \__
>> >
>> > I really don't know that lining up a scrappy $10K against NVIDIA is
>> > wise.  Seems like it would be better to throw that $10K at ATI open
>> > source driver development, to pressure NVIDIA to follow suit.
>>
>> In my humble opinion, there is the fallacy (or myth) while then there's
>> the common argument which says people are motivated by recognition as much
>> as (if not more then) they are motivated by concrete (or balance sheet)
                     ^ excuse my typos. I rarely proofread and some trolls
here use this to discredit me.


>> rewards.
>
> You have a point, and I'm not totally stranger to the need for public
> recognition myself.  But I do know, from personal experience, that
> efforts at public recognition need to be logistically sustained.

Your question/criticism is a very common one, but there is a very simple
answer to this. With popular work, whose scale of impact depends on it being
both Free and Open there will be people who depend on it. They will ensure
it's being sustained. Here at the University, for example, I am offered
money just to stick around. Activities that are not self-serving will always
get someone interested, if not dependent.


> Otherwise, people say "uuuh, I gotta go deal with reality!" and their
> efforts fold.  $10K is not much burn time.  It would last me 6..8
> months in Seattle, and I doubt it would last 1 person any more than 1
> year anywhere in the USA.  I think the people who continue to do open
> source for long periods of time "without money," are being logistically
> sustained by some other means.


Clearly. Just ask Open Source developers what/who it is that supports them.
Samba folks, for example, get a wage from companies such as Novell
(formerly) or Google. Same with OpenOffice. Mozilla makes many millions of
dollars.

Even kernel hackers has gone on Google's payroll (notably Andrew Morton).
Google needs their work, which affects hundreds of thousands of servers and
desktops.


> Another source of "profit" for the open source movement, is nightmare
> coders who really do put 80..100 hours a week into programming and
> nothing else.  But I refuse to live that way.  If nothing else, I'm
> unwilling to die prematurely due to lack of exercise.  I've yet to meet
> a nightmare coder that I thought was living a physically and mentally
> healthy lifestyle, but I suppose I haven't been rigorous in my sampling
> methodologies.  I suspect they are extremely rare if they exist at all.


Speaking for myself, I spend 10 hours a week at the health club and I eat
well. This still leaves plenty of time for coding, reading, writing and
social life. I have curtailed some sports though...

The advantage of working in freelance mode is that you get to set up your own
schedule. Call it the fifth freedom, atop the other software Freedoms. You
can go to places at the quitest of times if you wish, while everyone's at
work.


> At any rate, I've been opposed to the business model of nightmare
> coders throughout my so-called career.  It's the main reason I never
> got into the mainstream games industry.  I think such treatment of the
> worker is fundamentally inequitable, a nasty aspect of industrial
> capitalism.


I can't recall if the study that I have in mind was conducted in the UK
alone, but it suggested that 90% (99%?) of people who work in IT dread the
thought of coming to work and are nervous about their employment. A
colleague of mine from Long Island retired from his IT career and decided to
work as a school janitor at nighttime, so he's semi retired. It's stress,
not lack of regular and/or high income, that will make you age quicker (or
less gracefully). *smile*


>> The "food banks" argument doesn't fit perfectly well because, if
>> you have the skills, you can be hired at will.
> 
> Actually it is quite possible, especially in a slow economy, to spend a
> lot of time learning "the wrong skills" and then find the HR people
> don't want to hire you.  I don't recommend programming language
> esoterica or avant garde build engineering if you want to put food on
> the table.   What I've learned is useful for my own independent
> deveopment, but not for getting paid.  Hence I'm shifting gears to deal
> with the IBM Cell, because I'm certain that people will pay for that
> skill, and it's one of the very few things in commercialdom that I
> actually look forward to working on.  I've been waiting for a decent
> CPU for 9 years, after the DEC Alpha died.


I once overheard some people in the changing room who spoke about how working
in a single company for several years leaves you out of touch with
technology that's moving extremely rapidly. Employees are best employed
(READ: exploited) if they work repetitively, i.e. in the same P/L and
division. To them it means boredom and isolation from new emerging trends.
In due course this can lead to lack of value in the market. Just my humble
opinion. Do bear in mind that my programming experience is less than 10
years old. Far less in fact, so take it with a grain of salt...


>> Introducing the Open Graphics Project
>>
>> ,----[ Quote ]
>> | One project that I've been following quite closely lately is a
>> | project started by chip-designer Timothy Miller, called the Open
>> | Graphics Project. His goal, along with the rest of the project, known as
>> | the "Open Graphics Foundation" is to make a 3D accelerated video card
>> | which is fully documented, free-licensed, and open source.
> 
> Can it be manufactured cheaply enough by a knowledgeable individual to
> have any relevance?  I'm not up on what FPGAs and boards cost nowadays.


I suspect that, being an Open Source project, it's the design that counts.
Manufacturing is open to whoever wished to derive something from the
existing design, royalty-free. Sun has got a GPL-licensed CPU, so imagine
just paying for the production of wafers/chips. Intel's chips cost only $29
to manufacture, IIRC, based on something that I read last year.


> The problem with such ideas is they're prohibitively labor intensive
> and there's no money in them.  Whereas creating 3D graphics with the
> IBM Cell chip alone, to legally circumvent Sony's disabling of the
> graphics engine in the PS3, is more viable.  One's skill with an IBM
> Cell can make one $$$$$, enabling one to keep going.


Try looking out for a sponsor. There are always someone out there who is
ready to reap the benefit of the work... or maybe even offer collaboration.


> I think Open Source Hardware could become relevant in the future, the
> way Open Source Software is becoming relevant today.  But I suspect the
> performance simply isn't there for certain classes of problems yet.  On
> the other hand, the ability to experiment with hardware approaches to
> problems is important, and perhaps we're in the infancy of the
> viability of such approaches.  I remember seeing someone's FPGA sales
> pitch at a supercomputer conference in Denver 1.5 years ago.  The idea
> of compiling a HW version of my algorithm, and then trying some other
> version of my algorithm, did seem pretty kewl.


Well, Open/Free hardware is in its infancy and it plays catchup. The same
thing cannot be said about the large majority of software. Software is
virtually free to distribute (while Net neutrality lasts anyway), which
makes the margins less appealing when it comes to hardware. But don't let
this deter you. Mass-production changes things drastically. Just look at the
cost of CD burners and media.


>>
http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/07/19/introducing-the-open-graphics-project/
>>
>> This has attracted professors, IIRC. I have seen similar articles that
>> suggest progress is being made. Nothing can be shelved because it's open
>> source and it'll gain steam just like the Apache Foundation has. Companies
>> with interests will, in due time, provide backing (e.g. Google and
>> LinuxBIOS).
> 
> If it survives long enough to establish some semblance of market
> viability.  In contrast, nobody's sugar daddying Lisp or Scheme.
> They're not perceived as relevant.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Brandon Van Every


LinuxBIOS: The Forgotten Hero

,----[ Quote ]
| This begs the question: is anyone currently using LinuxBIOS on
| their machines? You bet they are. According to one recent report,
| LinuxBIOS was installed on about one million machines and that
|                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| existing number is expected to rise significantly, assuming the
| rate of growth remains constant.
`----

http://www.madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=7694

Just wait. It's growing fast.

-- 
                        ~~ Kind greetings and happy holidays!

Roy S. Schestowitz      | Linux: just set it and forget about it
http://Schestowitz.com  | Free as in Free Beer ¦  PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Load average (/proc/loadavg): 1.17 1.15 1.12 9/165 23933
      http://iuron.com - semantic search engine project initiative

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