[mythtv-users] OPen source video card support (Was:Is NVIDIA worth the bother?)

[Johnny]

> I don't know how much HDCP is a factor in keeping the API closed -
> after all, Intel is doing their best to open their video stuff up.  Of
> course, even if HDCP didn't exist at all, competitive pressures would
> likely keep Nvidia and AMD/ATI stuff closed - for the same reasons
> that Broadcom and Marvell keep their stuff closed.  If they think that
> exposing any information (be it APIs, or datasheets, or whatever)
> would help the competition in even the slightest way, their deluded
> paranoia usually prevents them from opening up at all.

ATI has opened most of their specs as of a year or two ago. The open
source community just hasn't been able to produce a quality driver on
the same pace as nvidia's closed source drivers. I was at an event
where an ATI engineer was speaking about their hardware and Richard
Stallman was protesting. The engineer said that the main issue with
opening the spec is that unlike the CPU community, they make radical
hardware and API changes from one GPU to the next. At the time they
simply don't want to deal with the legacy support and complexity that
came with opening it up. They felt it would make it harder for them to
make radical changes as quickly as the currently do. Second simply
producing and documenting all the APIs etc and making them available
with the appropriate licenses is time consuming and they simply don't
have a high incentive to do the work.