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Weather Channel Sponsors OSS ATI Radeon Drivers
jvmatthe writes "Jens Owen of Tungsten Graphics (mostly former VA Linux/Precision Insight employees) posted to the DRI developer's mailing list with some excellent news about the future of DRI drivers for the ATi Radeon 8500 video card: "The Weather Channel is funding TG to develop an open source 3D DRI driver for the ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card. The driver will be released to the XFree86 Project around Q4 of 2002, to be distributed to the public in future versions of the XFree86 X Server."
Presumably this means that this Weather Channel is the one footing the bill for the development. Given that the current Linux support for the 8500 is limited to a binary-only driver that is intended for a related professional-level card, the delivery of an open driver is excellent news. This is also listed at the bottom of the TG project page."
To me, the most exciting thing about this is that it may be the first example of what I believe is a coming shift in the economics of software. Right now, software is treated as a product like almost any other manufactured product. Programmers are laborers and they produce product for consumption.
Free Software turns this around. Programmers become professionals more like engineers, architects, and doctors. They are paid for the quality of their practice, not as units of production in a manufacturing enterprise. One of the most common complaints about Open Source and Free Software is that it is anti-capital and that it will put programmers out of work (or at least out of pay). I think that is just plain wrong. Most programmers working today do not work for software companies. Most work in MIS making systems of hardware and software fit the needs of specific businesses.
This is the first case I know of where a company that is not at all in the software industry is paying programmers to develop software that they need that will directly benefit them AND anyone else who wants to use it. (Several companies like RedHat and Mandrake have done the same over the last few years, but they are, at least in some hybrid sense, in the software industry).
I think this will happen more and more. This is happening right now only because Free Software and Open Source software must be being used at the Weather Channel widely enough that they need these drivers. Once Free Software reaches critical mass (I know: It's an abused term and I'm abusing it right now) this will happen more and more. Eventually it will make almost all kinds of software available for "free" (and Free) and programmers will be paid well for doing it. Instead of 21st century robber barons amassing gigantic fortunes for herding programmers together, thousands of programmers around the world will make more money than they do now developing software for "Free."
Why? Bcause computers and software have no inherent value. Their value comes only in how they improve the efficiency of other processes, or enable processes that could not be done without them. They are tools. They are used to make and do other things. It is this economic "amplification" effect that makes them valuable. Sure, there is some value in the software economy, but the efficiency boom that gave us the longest post-war economic expansion without substantial inflation wasn't entirely based on Microsoft's profits (or even slightly based on them. As rich as Microsoft is, they are just a drop in the bucket of the economy). No, it was the way the technology tools improved productitivty throughout the economy. They whole software industry (and by that I mean people who develop code industrially and keep it closed, raising the price by creating an artificial shortage) could vanish and be replaced by free software and programmers and the economy as a whole would get richer.
How will programmers get paid? Like this case.
So a company has to pay $150,000 to get something developed. If all the other software they use is both Free and free (libre and free? Free speech and Free beer?), they may well end up spending less on software while programmers get that reduced amount of money with little or no corporate overhead.
It becomes a profession, not an industrial enterprise.
My bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking for today...
ATI finally releases specs for their hardware DVD acceleration, if not out in the open, at least to this project. Their hardware DVD acceleration is GREAT in Windows. You can actually run a DVD-ROM on a Pentium 233MMX if you want to using one of their video cards if you don't mind not using the computer for anything else while the DVD plays.
ATI is to be commended for their relative openness compared to NVidia and Matrox. I think they have a ways to go on being cooperative, however since there are only a finite number of video card manufacturers they should be encouraged.
ATI should also be encouraged to find better coders for their Windows driver products, but that's another story for another place and time entirely.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.