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Trident Micro Changes Policy Toward XFree86
Alex writes: "According to Egbert on the Xpert Xfree86 mailing list, Trident Microsystems, who makes video chipsets for low end PC's and notebooks, has changed its policy towards open source developers. Get the details here."
If you want to email Trident Micro Public Relations, please be polite! Flaming will only hurt the chances that Trident will reverse this decision.
It's not worth the effort. Video hardware is immensely complicated. A Linux video driver programmer could add support for 10 other chips in the time it would to reverse-engineer the Windows drivers.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It's not so much the chip won't be supported at all-- the standard Trident driver should still work. What they're referring to more is the proprietary acceleration features built into the chip. Those types of added features and benefits (which are actually probably required for any decent output from the card) are what will be missing.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
They have basically stopped driver updates on the Mobility series, even though that chipset is used in many CURRENTLY shipping products.
They won't fix dual display under Windows 2000/XP, even though every other manufacturer has figured it out.
If you are in the market for a laptop, I would highly recommend getting something with the new Nvidia chipset.
there has always been a bit of confusion over trident drivers
e.g. the CYBER9385 this had at one stage 3 drivers distributed in a major release this is because they named chips the same
Trident supplies low cost chips because they are small (as in die size) and thus makes them less power hungry which is essential in laptops
the problem is that lately they have done into the onboard chipset market with Mother Board manufactures garbing them as a cheap way to stick video on board
then trident accelerated parts of their chips for these vendors
they have always been tight but allowed NDA people to help out writing drivers
the people you should complain to are the MB manufacturers who properly paid for the work to be done
so this begs the question who uses trident that you know ?
me I know SIS do so
write to
China
Ms. Ellie Yin
Tel:886+2+29161619 ext.346
E-mail: ellie@sis.com.tw.
Europe, Taiwan, Japan, Korea:
Ms. Jessie Lee
Tel:886+2+29161619 ext.341
E-mail: jessie@sis.com.tw
America(Canada,U.S., and Latin America), Oceania:
Miss Michele Huang
Tel:886+2+29161619 ext.345
E-mail: michele@sis.com.tw.
for your appropriate dealer
regards
john jones
Competitive advantages w/ hardware often turn on clever use of data flow within chip designs, and it is often possible to obtain patents on such designs. At the same time, aspects of these designs are often exposed in driver API's.
It is a common beleif (I've had lawyers give conflicting advice in this area) that protecting API's under NDA's helps defend against a competitor figuring out what you're doing from "public domain" information and thereby having a legal basis to circumvent a patent.
The technical and legal merit of this position are certainly arguable.
You could also add that "opening" an API requires spending some effort (and $) spent on creating publicly readable documentation (although I've had to work with documentation from many non-English companies that apparently hired elementary school students to translate...)
Closed source drivers for such cards seem like a great solution for this problem, but many people in the open source community have 'religious' problems with this.
Part of this information is retrieved from a person I know and part of it is fiction. The relevance to the XFree thing is the last two paragraphs.
So here is the thing.
Trident has filed a patent for a technology that they want to use in their new line of chips. We can all agree on how evil patents are, but they are allowed to file patents. In order to use a patent pending status, you can't disclose source code or specs. That being freely available invites others to implement the technology. So to be awarded a patent one must take reasonable steps to prevent others from copying the design. If that isn't being done, the patent can be considered void in a patent lawsuit. After that, the technology is considered Public Domain.
If Trident wishes that this patent goes through, they need to take this action. Otherwise somebody can simply retrieve a spec from them and/or work out the source code and reimplement in another chip.
I could care less if Microsoft subsidised this or not. Trident is allowed to publish specs if they want to and withold them if they so desire. This is their right.
All I know is that I will not be purchasing any Trident products in the future. This is my right. Until the day that legislators tell me that I MUST buy a Trident product I am not going to complain about this. There are plenty of other chip makers out there and they make good stuff. In my opinion, Trident chips have always been flaky and low budget.
Alex
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
Really? At Linux.conf.au I asked a member of the XFree86 team who'd just finished a taslk what chipset he'd recommend for mobile users. His response was the ATI Rage Mobility (16Mb model). Open Source drivers, the all important XVideo support, and good performance (better than the same card under Windows) was the absis for his decision.
While I wouldn't buy Trident for performance but they are traditionally very reliable. The people I know have built OEM whitebox computers in the past know which vendors are reliable and which aren't, they prefer Trident based boards because they are cheap and people don't have to return them. Other, whizzier, video chipsets tend to have more wierd issues with particular software or they overheat and die, but the Trident based boards didn't have these problems.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!