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Weather Channel Sponsors OSS ATI Radeon Drivers

Posted by michael on from the cold-front-coming-in-from-the-west dept.

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."

2 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Makes sense. by pirodude · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They're probably intrested in new and interesting graphics for their channel and most of their software probably runs on a system that uses Xwindows. By funding the development they not only get the drivers they need but also get to help out the community.

    1. Re:Makes sense. by #undefined · · Score: 4, Interesting

      this is great to see as this has been touted (by others and myself) to be where open source makes the most sense to a company: non-business-core computer software.

      the weather channel's primary business is grabbing eyeballs (to sell itself to cable companies or to sell air-time through commercials during its segments) and it does that through weather forecasting.

      video drivers are not the mainstay of their business, but definitely help them in their business. the weather channel doesn't care about selling video drivers. that's not their business. they just need video drivers. and they can pay someone else to create those video drivers and then give the source code away without "selling the farm": giving away a business secret to a competitor.

      this would be the same as a music production company paying someone to produce open source drivers for a sound card. the company gets drivers, free support from the community, and yet doesn't give away its secrets or the upper hand to competitors. it's a win-win situation for the company and the community.

      this is how i expect to see open source prevail in the future: companies paying for open source development that aids their business (but is not their sole business), and the action being justified by knowing that the open source community (that has an interest in the developed software) will support (to some degree) the software.

      in the weather channel's case, this made perfect sense.