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AMD Confirms Vulkan Driver For Linux, But To Start Off As Closed-Source
An anonymous reader writes: AMD has finally revealed some basic details concerning their support of Vulkan on Linux. AMD has a Vulkan driver but it will begin its life as closed-source, reports Phoronix. In time the AMD Vulkan driver will transition to being open-source. This Vulkan driver is built to interface with their new AMDGPU kernel DRM driver that's part of their long talked about AMD open-source strategy for Linux. This closed-then-open Vulkan driver will be competing with Valve's Intel Vulkan driver that will be open from day one.
No doubt, AMD loves to tout open this and that but keeps their stuff closed as long as possible. example, AMD said mantle was gonna be open source for since day one, did THEY ever release the source for it before killing development for it?
I have a Vulcan driver... he's very dependable, never a road-rager (except during Pan Faar but I usually just give him the week off).
Most of it turned into Vulkan in the first place so...yes?
I would guess their assorted contracts with console makers is the reason for closed source issues more than some AMD desire to keep code secret for ??? and profit. Mantle supports XBox and PS4, I doubt it does that without a whole lot of proprietary(and therefore licensed) information about their platforms.
is it better to give us a functional binary blob that still has licensed code or make us wait for it to be completely removed and tested?
> To keep the competition in the dark?
I would doubt it would give the competition any real advantage - given that the it's written specfically for AMD hardware and the competition already have working drivers that are doing the same thing as AMD's drivers.
More, likely it's to hide stuff that might be infringing on patients, contain plagarised code, or gaming benchmarks.
Like the saying goes.... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a dozen times over the course of two decades, shame on me. I fully expect to be nickel'ed and dime'ed over features like clock-speed, GPU, video transcoding, and thermal management until well after the product's lifecycle.
Probably more accurately, they are building the driver to work first, then they need to do a legal assessment to see what code (if any) has restrictions on it.
Hard to do that before it has taken shape and starts working.
Is it closed source because the Direct Rendering Manager driver has to enforce Digital Restrictions Management in order for things like Netflix to work?