Red Hat has been the main funding source for the DRI, SGI contributed early on, but Red Hat is continuing to fund the development as the DRI gets enhanced. Precision Insight was not informed about the work SGI and NVIDIA has done on their driver, but a posting on this thread by SGI indicated that their system will not use the DRI. Their posting claimed that the DRI is not suitable for their hardware, but the reality is that the DRI must be enhanced each time a new class of graphics boards is enabled. The DRI is perfectly capable of being used for ANY hardware, it is open sourced and can be modified freely to support any new card with much less effort than it would take to create an entirely new graphical subsystem and get it integrated into mainstream Linux and XFree86. Besides the infrastructure funding by Red Hat - Intel, Matrox, ATI, and 3dfx are all funding DRI driver work at PI for their respective boards. A portion of their funding is being used to enable the DRI for their specific class of graphics board, so the DRI itself gets enhanced with each new driver that is developed. NVIDIA has a very large engineering team who have the expertise they need to handle any Unix or Linux development. If they choose to use the DRI, they have the resources to do so on their own, or they can contract with PI or anyone else with the required expertise.
SGI's early funding and engineering assistance was used by PI, in part, to make sure that high end boards, as well as commodity and "rasterization only" boards, could run under the DRI . PI is not as concerned about IHV's using the DRI as we are about encouraging IHV's to make sure their drivers at least cooperate with the DRI. Cooperation in this sense is simply to make sure that whatever they do with a driver will allow, for example, another display to possibly use a DRI driver. It is also important for managing display space and X Server compatibility that whatever driver is present makes use of the appropriate DRI structures that will be integral to XFree86 4.0. Initialization and configuration of graphics boards is also a part of DRI cooperation. If drivers don't at least cooperate with the DRI, then end users will suffer in the long term when they try to get technical support, or upgrade to newer Linux distributions, kernel modules, or GLIBC versions. These same upgrade and support issues will exist in the DRI, but the mechanism for maintaining compatibility with future software will be greatly simplified for end users if they can receive the appropriate versions of all of the software required in a Linux (or other OS) system from their single distribution vendor of choice.
The real question people need to ask is if there will by any royalty fees required from IHV's or end users in order to use OpenGL on Linux. Are we going to see another iteration of the Sun Java scenario? The disturbing part of the press release to me, was the reference to "real OpenGL". This was a very clear message that any independent implementation of the OpenGL API, no matter how well done, would not be "real" unless there was some license executed between the purveyor of the software and SGI. PI would strongly support a royalty free license from SGI to use the OpenGL trademark. We would also strongly support a requirement that the integrity of the trademark be maintained by requiring any users of the trademark to submit to whatever tests were required by the ARB. However, we believe that the open source community should also have some representation on the ARB.
To summarize, there are really two issues: 1) cooperation with the DRI mechanism that will be part of every copy of Linux that uses the industry standard XFree86 4.0 X Server, and 2) OpenGL license and royalty issues. The open source nature of the upcoming SGI/NVIDIA driver is a red herring. The market will provide the business reasons to open the driver source - or not - just as it has done in many other cases. We should be focusing on the real issues.
Thad, The DRI is already available in the work in progress branch of the upcoming XFree86 4.0 X Server. So far we have released a driver for the Voodoo 3, but DRI compatible Intel 810, Rage 128, and G400 drivers will all be released by March of this year. You are correct in your statements about the upcoming driver capabilities, and they will ALL be fully open sourced.
PI uses Mesa, an implementation of the OpenGL API, to bring freely available, open source hardware accelerated 3D to Linux. The open source distribution mechanism and general open source philosophy cannot tolerate the requirement for any licensing fees, so PI and Mesa cannot make any claim about OpenGL conformance. We do have an open source project underway called "Glean", which provides an infrastructure for creation of fully open source test routines that will provide whatever level of 3D verification and testing that is required by open source users. Because all Mesa work is open sourced, anyone who discovers a problem in Mesa can either fix the problem or report it to Brian Paul so that he can make the fixes. We believe that between the work PI is doing, and all the work of many open source developers, Mesa will reach the highest possible level of 3D performance and quality within the industry standard XFree86 X Server.
I agree with you that there will be an explosion of interest in 3D under Linux. We will always welcome any opportunity to work closely with SGI and any IHV, to improve the availability, quality, and performance of open source 3D.
PI has put together a development team that consists of some of the most respected engineers in the open source graphics development community. Many people have expressed an interest in knowing more about PI and its goals as an organization, and I'd like to offer this explanation.
PI views itself as a support arm of the XFree86 Project which serves as a bridge between commercial interests, and open source developers. As a commercial Independent Software Vendor (ISV), PI is directly responsible to its clients to meet their product release dates and their quality, performance, and support requirements. That culpability allows PI's clients to offer those assurances to their own OEM customers, removing a major perceived impediment for commercial companies in using open source software. Red Hat Inc. was the first open source software company to contract with PI. They have funded development of NeoMagic drivers and drivers for the Intel 740 graphics chipset. Red Hat has also funded (with additional funding from SGI) the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) which will be part of XFree86 4.0. Red Hat continues to fund PI to produce extensions to the DRI, and other improvements to XFree86 and the Linux graphics pipeline. PI's Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV) clients include 3dfx, Intel, ATI, and Matrox. PI will be releasing DRI based drivers for chipsets produced by each of those companies by Q2 of this year.
PI welcomes any software contributions to its various code bases from any 3rd party developer so that PI's clients can receive the full benefits of any open source free development, but PI does not generate revenue from those contributions. In fact, PI assumes 2nd level support liability for the code in those contributions on behalf of PI's clients. By producing open source software (every driver PI produces is now fully open sourced), PI can work closely with free software developers. PI now uses SourceForge (from VA Linux) to host all of its development work in a fully open sourced environment. PI owns no intellectual property and it sells no retail products.
XFree86 is a non-profit corporation that is controlled by its own board of directors. It requires that any development accepted for distribution meets the needs of the open source community. PI is absolutely committed to preserving its support relationship with XFree86. PI's clients fund projects to develop software which PI donates back to the free software community because they directly benefit from improvements to the graphics infrastructure. That development model allows PI's clients to focus their in house resources on tasks that are specific to their own products, and not waste resources on redundant development. PI's close relationship with the XFree86 Project and with commercial companies, provides the required bridge that allows these seemingly disparate interests to be mutually served. There is much more information about PI and its projects available at http://www.precisioninsight.com
Christopher, We keep good relationships with all of the XFree86 developers. VA Linux is actually hosting our open source development repository (SourceForge). We spend a lot of our time coordinating our efforts with those of VA Linux, Red Hat, and SuSE so that XFree86, and ultimately all open source end users, can have the largest possible benefit from the combined efforts of literally hundreds of XFree86 contributors.
James, The work Precision Insight Inc. (PI) is doing will provide the 3D hardware acceleration in an X Window that these games need for Linux. Check out 3dfxgamers.com under "drivers" to find the pre-release of our first DRI based Mesa driver. If you get to check it out, I'd appreciate your feedback on the frame rate that you get on your system. Three other drivers are scheduled to be released by PI before April of 2000. ATI has announced that one of the drivers will be for the Rage 128, the other two have not yet been announced. Both announced drivers will have full source code and will become part of XFree86 4.0. At least one of the other two will also have full source code. Frank
Gurlia, I don't think it matters how a project starts. If it's a clone to begin with, and it's a worthwhile project (i.e., many people can benefit, and benefit more from the project if it is in open source form), then it will eventually shed any humble beginnings and be elevated to much greater heights than any proprietary software could ever hope to reach. If it starts out in open source form I believe it will follow the same progression, assuming, of course, that the functionality of the program is important and that, as a component of a computer system infrastructure, it is necessary for it to exist in open source form. Frank
XFree86 has served the open source community by organizing, coordinating, and supporting a massive effort to guarantee open source, freely available implementations of the X Window System. Their work has been the cornerstone of desktop operability on millions of computers worldwide, making them a true industry standard for graphics. It is very heartening to finally see the XFree86 Project be recognized for their tremendous contribution and their years of dedication.
NVIDIA had published information on their upcoming Linux plans quite some time ago: http://www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/sof tware_drivers.html
Re:XFree86 could be a little more open
on
XFree86 News
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· Score: 1
Dirk, As you said, PI is not in competition with any open source development group. We are committed to supporting the efforts of the XFree86 Project and we get funding from Red Hat, SGI, and many other sources to continue writing software that we donate to the open source community. We developed our DRI independently of S.u.S.E.'s 3D work. Prior to the release of the DRI, there was no 3D available in XFree86, so it was natural and appropriate to direct inquires regarding 3D to S.u.S.E. since you were most familiar with their work at the time.
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SGI's early funding and engineering assistance was used by PI, in part, to make sure that high end boards, as well as commodity and "rasterization only" boards, could run under the DRI . PI is not as concerned about IHV's using the DRI as we are about encouraging IHV's to make sure their drivers at least cooperate with the DRI. Cooperation in this sense is simply to make sure that whatever they do with a driver will allow, for example, another display to possibly use a DRI driver. It is also important for managing display space and X Server compatibility that whatever driver is present makes use of the appropriate DRI structures that will be integral to XFree86 4.0. Initialization and configuration of graphics boards is also a part of DRI cooperation. If drivers don't at least cooperate with the DRI, then end users will suffer in the long term when they try to get technical support, or upgrade to newer Linux distributions, kernel modules, or GLIBC versions. These same upgrade and support issues will exist in the DRI, but the mechanism for maintaining compatibility with future software will be greatly simplified for end users if they can receive the appropriate versions of all of the software required in a Linux (or other OS) system from their single distribution vendor of choice.
The real question people need to ask is if there will by any royalty fees required from IHV's or end users in order to use OpenGL on Linux. Are we going to see another iteration of the Sun Java scenario? The disturbing part of the press release to me, was the reference to "real OpenGL". This was a very clear message that any independent implementation of the OpenGL API, no matter how well done, would not be "real" unless there was some license executed between the purveyor of the software and SGI. PI would strongly support a royalty free license from SGI to use the OpenGL trademark. We would also strongly support a requirement that the integrity of the trademark be maintained by requiring any users of the trademark to submit to whatever tests were required by the ARB. However, we believe that the open source community should also have some representation on the ARB.
To summarize, there are really two issues: 1) cooperation with the DRI mechanism that will be part of every copy of Linux that uses the industry standard XFree86 4.0 X Server, and 2) OpenGL license and royalty issues. The open source nature of the upcoming SGI/NVIDIA driver is a red herring. The market will provide the business reasons to open the driver source - or not - just as it has done in many other cases. We should be focusing on the real issues.
The DRI is already available in the work in progress branch of the upcoming XFree86 4.0 X Server. So far we have released a driver for the Voodoo 3, but DRI compatible Intel 810, Rage 128, and G400 drivers will all be released by March of this year. You are correct in your statements about the upcoming driver capabilities, and they will ALL be fully open sourced.
PI uses Mesa, an implementation of the OpenGL API, to bring freely available, open source hardware accelerated 3D to Linux. The open source distribution mechanism and general open source philosophy cannot tolerate the requirement for any licensing fees, so PI and Mesa cannot make any claim about OpenGL conformance. We do have an open source project underway called "Glean", which provides an infrastructure for creation of fully open source test routines that will provide whatever level of 3D verification and testing that is required by open source users. Because all Mesa work is open sourced, anyone who discovers a problem in Mesa can either fix the problem or report it to Brian Paul so that he can make the fixes. We believe that between the work PI is doing, and all the work of many open source developers, Mesa will reach the highest possible level of 3D performance and quality within the industry standard XFree86 X Server.
I agree with you that there will be an explosion of interest in 3D under Linux. We will always welcome any opportunity to work closely with SGI and any IHV, to improve the availability, quality, and performance of open source 3D.
PI has put together a development team that consists of some of the most
respected engineers in the open source graphics development community.
Many people have expressed an interest in knowing more about PI and its
goals as an organization, and I'd like to offer this explanation.
PI views itself as a support arm of the XFree86 Project which serves as
a bridge between commercial interests, and open source developers. As a
commercial Independent Software Vendor (ISV), PI is directly responsible
to its clients to meet their product release dates and their quality,
performance, and support requirements. That culpability allows PI's
clients to offer those assurances to their own OEM customers, removing a
major perceived impediment for commercial companies in using open source
software. Red Hat Inc. was the first open source software company to
contract with PI. They have funded development of NeoMagic drivers and
drivers for the Intel 740 graphics chipset. Red Hat has also funded
(with additional funding from SGI) the Direct Rendering Infrastructure
(DRI) which will be part of XFree86 4.0. Red Hat continues to fund PI
to produce extensions to the DRI, and other improvements to XFree86 and
the Linux graphics pipeline. PI's Independent Hardware Vendor (IHV)
clients include 3dfx, Intel, ATI, and Matrox. PI will be releasing DRI
based drivers for chipsets produced by each of those companies by Q2 of
this year.
PI welcomes any software contributions to its various code bases from
any 3rd party developer so that PI's clients can receive the full
benefits of any open source free development, but PI does not generate
revenue from those contributions. In fact, PI assumes 2nd level support
liability for the code in those contributions on behalf of PI's
clients. By producing open source software (every driver PI produces is
now fully open sourced), PI can work closely with free software
developers. PI now uses SourceForge (from VA Linux) to host all of its
development work in a fully open sourced environment. PI owns no
intellectual property and it sells no retail products.
XFree86 is a non-profit corporation that is controlled by its own board
of directors. It requires that any development accepted for
distribution meets the needs of the open source community. PI is
absolutely committed to preserving its support relationship with
XFree86. PI's clients fund projects to develop software which PI
donates back to the free software community because they directly
benefit from improvements to the graphics infrastructure. That
development model allows PI's clients to focus their in house resources
on tasks that are specific to their own products, and not waste
resources on redundant development. PI's close relationship with the
XFree86 Project and with commercial companies, provides the required
bridge that allows these seemingly disparate interests to be mutually
served. There is much more information about PI and its projects
available at http://www.precisioninsight.com
Christopher,
We keep good relationships with all of the XFree86 developers. VA Linux is actually hosting our open source development repository (SourceForge). We spend a lot of our time coordinating our efforts with those of VA Linux, Red Hat, and SuSE so that XFree86, and ultimately all open source end users, can have the largest possible benefit from the combined efforts of literally hundreds of XFree86 contributors.
James,
The work Precision Insight Inc. (PI) is doing will provide the 3D hardware acceleration in an X Window that these games need for Linux. Check out 3dfxgamers.com under "drivers" to find the pre-release of our first DRI based Mesa driver. If you get to check it out, I'd appreciate your feedback on the frame rate that you get on your system. Three other drivers are scheduled to be released by PI before April of 2000. ATI has announced that one of the drivers will be for the Rage 128, the other two have not yet been announced. Both announced drivers will have full source code and will become part of XFree86 4.0. At least one of the other two will also have full source code.
Frank
Gurlia,
I don't think it matters how a project starts. If it's a clone to begin with, and it's a worthwhile project (i.e., many people can benefit, and benefit more from the project if it is in open source form), then it will eventually shed any humble beginnings and be elevated to much greater heights than any proprietary software could ever hope to reach. If it starts out in open source form I believe it will follow the same progression, assuming, of course, that the functionality of the program is important and that, as a component of a computer system infrastructure, it is necessary for it to exist in open source form.
Frank
XFree86 has served the open source community by organizing, coordinating, and supporting a massive effort to guarantee open source, freely available implementations of the X Window System. Their work has been the cornerstone of desktop operability on millions of computers worldwide, making them a true industry standard for graphics. It is very heartening to finally see the XFree86 Project be recognized for their tremendous contribution and their years of dedication.
NVIDIA had published information on their upcoming Linux plans quite some time ago:f tware_drivers.html
http://www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/so
Dirk,
As you said, PI is not in competition with any open source development group. We are committed to supporting the efforts of the XFree86 Project and we get funding from Red Hat, SGI, and many other sources to continue writing software that we donate to the open source community. We developed our DRI independently of S.u.S.E.'s 3D work. Prior to the release of the DRI, there was no 3D available in XFree86, so it was natural and appropriate to direct inquires regarding 3D to S.u.S.E. since you were most familiar with their work at the time.