[ Thanks to Patrick
Mullen for this link. ]
“Lately we’ve been seeing faster and faster components
emerge, but very little happening in “new” technology. This may not
be seen as a good thing, but it does help the Linux community catch
up. Lately, have they ever caught up. It’s getting harder and
harder to find hardware that won’t work on Linux. Granted, it’s
still out there. Many Winmodems are non-functional (although some
are), and you have companies like 3dfx and ATI lagging behind
badly, allowing companies like NVidia to take a commanding charge
and take a hold of a market they once had eating out of their
hands.”
“3dfx really had the Linux community with their excellent
drivers on XFree86 3.3.6, but since the release of XFree86 4.0, the
rules have certainly changed. The Linux community is also
experiencing many open-minded Windows users venture into the realm
of Linux to see what all the hype is about. This is one of the
things that has allowed NVidia to truly flourish under Linux. For
example, Windows users certainly don’t care about whether their
drivers are open source, since they’ve been dealing with
closed-source the entire time in Windows.”
“Another company working with a similar license structure is
Matrox. Matrox utilizes Macrovision’s technology in their dual-head
cards, and therefore must keep their drivers closed-source. This
makes 3dfx one of the few companies truly committed to keeping
their drivers open source (but in an annoying RPM format), mainly
because of the fact that Precision Insight (but apparently PI is
doing work with ATI and Matrox now, too) is helping them write a
large sum of their code-one company that has constantly stood
behind open source.”
Complete
Story [ Note that the intro. page is titled “A Look at
Licensing” – LT ed. ]