[Dri-devel] Re: future of DRI? -> why no one plays with Glide3. -> documentation.

[Mike A. H. <mh...@re...>]

On Mon, 3 Mar 2003, Smitty wrote:

>> I'd love to see more vendors providing specs, and doing so more
>> openly, and preferably without NDAs.  Ragging on vendors who do
>> permit access to docs under NDA to people of their choosing, for
>> not providing them to the world, is more likely to dry up access
>> to specs for _EVERYONE_, and make binary only drivers the only
>> way of getting modern hardware to work.
>> 
>> In other words, I believe that whining about these certain
>> realities, is equivalent to shooting one's self in the foot.
>
>Mike you're quite the downer at the moment, been a rough weekend? <g>

Neither really.  ;o)  I'm just expressing my opinion on how
things are, and what we can realistically expect now, and in the
near future, at least from my perspective.  I might not be 100%
correct, but it's how I see things from my current viewpoint
anyway.


>I couldn't care two hoots about whether or not ATI sits on the hardware
>documentation or starts distributing it to univertsities as teching aids.
>
>What I'm saying is that if they'd decide "gee this document can
>be released without problem, along with this pile over here and
>this lot over here can probably be released for use only for
>writing OSS drivers" then they should go ahead and do it.

Absolutely.  I think they'd (any vendor, not just ATI) do that if
they really wanted to do that.  I think the fact that some
vendors do not do that is indicative that they don't want to do
that however, or they would.  ;o)

>It would make life a lot simpler for all concerned.  Why should
>people have to fight to get documentation when ATI is in reality
>quite happy to give out certain docs, but because they have
>ceated an awkward process.

I don't see it as a fight at all.  Aside from the very few
vendors who have publically released documentation (such as 3Dfx
Voodoo 3, some older Intel docs, etc.), ATI is one of the vendors
who provides docs to more people under NDA than any of the other
vendors, with the exception of the cards mentioned above and some
other older things here and there.  In other words, if the
alternative to a vendors docs under NDA, is no docs at all from
the vendor, I don't think we should complain.


>At the end of the day an NDA isn't much protection, eventually
>the doc will fall into the hands of someone they don't want it
>to, whether someone has to steal it off someone who has signed a
>NDA, find it in the trash, bribe the night staff.

Well, if people do not honour the NDAs that vendors give, it is a 
no brainer what will happen.  If someone leaks documentation and 
breaks the NDA and it gets back to the vendor, the vendor is most 
likely just going to do one of:

1) Not provide documentation to people anymore period

2) Make the NDA more restrictive and provide documentation to 
   less people

3) Provide watermarked docs under NDA to individuals.  If docs 
   leak, they can then sue the person who leaked them, as it is 
   obvious due to the watermarking

4) Force developers to work right in the vendor's headquarters in 
   a monitored room with access to docs that don't leave the 
   premises (such as some of the Serverworks IDE work, etc.)



>It pretty much is an all or nothing approach.
>
>If they're prepared to release docs to members of TG, why don't they
>release them to TG directly?

I really don't understand your point here.  You are suggesting 
that ATI release docs to TG, and then let TG decide who gets them 
and who does not get them.  ATI is capable of deciding who they 
want having their docs, and if they wanted TG to be the people to 
decide that, they would ask TG to do that.  The fact that that 
has not taken place means that they are capable of deciding this 
on their own, and that that is not an option that they consider 
doing.

I don't see the point of it anyway.


>What I was doing was putting forward a suggestion that TG may be
>able to get docs out of ATI easier (without screwing over ATI in
>the preocess).

And my suggestion, is that if ATI wanted docs to go into the
hands of random open source developers through TG, that they
would themselves just give docs to those random open source
developers, which is the way it is now.  Developers get the docs
from ATI, or they do not get the docs from ATI.  I completely
fail to see how/why/what TG has anything to do with this
whatsoever.


>It was just a suggestion, maybe after I learn C I'll care, and
>argue my points with a lot more conviction.

If you do not know C, the documentation would be useless to you 
in any case.  It always seems to be the people who don't even 
know how to write helloworld.c that are the ones who complain 
about a vendor like ATI not providing them with hardware 
documentation that they couldn't do anything but make paper 
airplanes out of anyway.

$0.02




-- 
Mike A. Harris     ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat