Trident Micro Changes Policy Toward XFree86 275
Alex writes: "According to Egbert on the Xpert Xfree86 mailing list, Trident Microsystems, who makes video chipsets for low end PC's and notebooks, has changed its policy towards open source developers. Get the details here."
If you want to email Trident Micro Public Relations, please be polite! Flaming will only hurt the chances that Trident will reverse this decision.
No need to write to Trident (Score:5, Insightful)
As soon as vendors announce that they will be CyberBladeXP or later Trident chipsets simply send an email to the vendors sales department notifying them that you will not be buying their laptop because the video subsystem does not work with your chosen security-based operating system.
Trident won't respond to a few users, but they will respond to vendors who are fielding complaints.
CyberBlade XP, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)
i wonder if MS is in the backrooms twisting some arms...
Why do companies do this type of thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do companies do this sort of thing with their products? It would seem to me that having the interface to a particular chip would not be particularly helpful to designing a competitor, ("Well, if I tell it to draw a blue square, it draws a blue square! I know how to copy that!") so what good does this do?
I've always been under the (possibly mistaken) impression that it made more sense to distribute specifications to everyone, so that others could use your hardware. If you have to write the drivers yourself for every operating system that you are going to allow to use your hardware then that would add quickly up to a rather large expense, wouldn't it?
Are drivers really that much of a proprietary, critical secret for hardware companies? Does having the source code for your drivers help anyone else create drivers for their products? What benefit is there in preventing others from having the drivers?
Sorry if these questions seem silly or unimportant, but I've never understood the other side of the secrecy of our drivers argument.
at this point can we help or hurt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Significant amounts of well-reasoned arguments in emails from end users might possibly have an impact. Of course, as soon as this hits
sad, but true. there are a lot of good arguments to be made for keeping this information open to the public. but when an issue like this gets pushed into everyone's view it tends to generate comments that might push the company further away from open source instead of closer to it.
granted, the "cat's out of the bag" at this point, let's just hope trident sees the light and reverses their decision (before 3d acceleration took off, all i used was a trident, 2MBs of video RAM
_f
putting on the pressure (Score:3, Insightful)
Push the purchasers for your company and/or school to notify suppliers that you won't be accepting Trident chipsets because of this decision. Inform them that you need to be able to use your machines interchangably, and if Trident chipsets are not being supported by Linux, you won't be able to use them in your Linux boxes...
It's easier if you know that, in a crunch, you're not going to have interchangability problems with a machine because of Trident's unwillingness to support Linux. This leverages a possible 5-20% linux market share into a 100% purchase decision, on firm financial/operations grounds.
Something to note is that, even where Linux may not be a high percentage of a groups machine count, Linux boxes are often in a high profile or critical area. Being unable to deploy a machine into such a location could be a real impact to the company. If nothing else, it's just an unwelcome annoyance.
An OEM faced with a choice between losing a medium-large customer or switching to a 'widely supported chipset', is more likely to walk away from Trident. that sort of pressure is something that is likely to be 'heard' by the company.
Re:Boo Hoo (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:CyberBlade XP, eh? (Score:2, Insightful)
I do think the parents post is funny, but it is probably more interesting than anything else. What would they have to gain by closing the doors to the people that write drivers to help them increase market share?
Re:at this point can we help or hurt? (Score:2, Insightful)
But for the most part, Slashdot readers are going to be much happier bickering amongst themselves.
Here's one helpful arguement (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. And since the contact address given was public_relations@tridentmicro.com [mailto], I chose a PR-related arguement: first of all, all open source users (growing in number!) will have to avoid this new chipset, since it won't be supported. But more importantly, we'll remember Trident's decision and be less likely to support them in the future. Here's the letter I sent to that address; feel free use it as an inspiration for a note (not flame) of your own:
Hi -
I recently learned that Trident has decided not to provide chipset
documentation for the CyberBladeXP chipset to open source developers.
The effect of this decision is that Trident customers who choose to use
open source operating systems such as Linux or BSD with their computers
will not enjoy the full functionality of their CyberBladeXP video
systems. In fact, the systems may not work at all.
Besides being rude and alienating to your own customers, this news of
these non-functioning systems will spread by word of mouth, and people
will avoid Trident chipsets intentionally. At first, it will only be
certain chipsets that they try to avoid. But, as I'm sure you know, once
a company's name has been associated with a poor product, it becomes
difficult to trust that company for other products, as well.
In short, I'm not sure if I would even have bought a CyberBladeXP chip
from any vendor. But now that I know it won't work on my system, I will
be sure to avoid it. And now that I know Trident is upsupportive of my
software, I will probably have to avoid your products altogether in the
future.
Please reconsider your decision about the chipset documentation.
Sincerely,
[my name was here, put in yours]
I buy computers ... (Score:1, Insightful)
What I really want is a web site that rates vendors based on how much information they provide to Open Source developers and on what terms. Something like the documentation that comes with gphoto, which says exactly which vendors provided specs to the developers.
I don't care about seeing which video card has the highest performance and then hoping someone can reverse-engineer a driver for that card. That's bass-ackwards. First I want to know whether the vendor provides free specs, and then I will choose between those vendors who do.
Don't write Trident, write their clients (Score:2, Insightful)
- What you like on their hardware that you'd want in the future. A cool way to seal the case closed, lack of noise, the choice of the components.
- What you dislike.
- Your concerns about the future (e.g.: this box has a trident video board and the specs were available for free software developers, future trident board won't, and that would prevent me from buying your hardware again in the future)
- Remember to mention that being compatible with non-MS systems (or at least having reasonable hardware, which specs are available) is a major must-have on computers you buy
Good manufacturers will like to hear from you. And it's much more important writing such a feedback about portables, where changing the video board is not simple, many times not possible.This is also valid for the computer(s) you use at your work place. If you can gather some co-workers to agree about the matter, write a memo to whoever is responsible for buying hardware in your company, have him/her write the computer supplier about what the company's concerns are. A big annual sale can make the manufacturer worry more about driver availability.
Re:Why do companies do this type of thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Example: look at all the tulip (network card) chipset clones out there. Last I checked they don't win on being better than the tulip, most of them are actually crappier; they win on being cheaper parts that (basically) work with already-written software.
And apparently it's not that hard. Quoting a coward from an early soundblaster article (only the most reliable sources here!), "weitek reverse engineered one of Sun's graphics chipsets because they got hold of a single .h with the register specs".
However it seems to me this strategy is only of any use when you're a big player with a popular chipset, trying to keep the little players down. My perception is that Trident is neither, so why they are doing this is beyond me.
Re:Its just Open Source vs. IP confidentiality (Score:4, Insightful)
Very true. But in this PARTICULAR situation, Trident is no doubt in the process of obtaining patent(s). Which means that from their perspective they need to play it safe until the patent has been awarded. I'm not a fan of patents, but this is the way the game is (and always has been) played.
In many cases, API hoarding is done by a CTO or a product manager or two who thinks their technology is so wonderful and original that 1) nobody has done it before 2) nobody is smart enough to do it on their own and 3) exposing the API will allow somebody to "steal" their brilliant idea.
Very rarely does this type of CTO/manager have any academic/scientific background; normally they are MBA types who think every passing clever idea they have is a potential make-money-fast scheme.
Most REAL engineers/scientists realize that most everything has already been done, and most "innovations" are built upon millions of other (much older) ideas.
Unfortunately, most of the population does not belong in this category, and thinks that Salad Shooters(TM) need patent protection.