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President of the XFree86 Joins Precision Insight 42

Posted by CmdrTaco from the way-to-go-david dept.
franklamonica writes "David Dawes, one of the original founders of the XFree86 Project, and its President for the last seven years, has decided to join Precision Insight Inc." PI has been heavily involved in extending XF86 to include top notch 3d support, and releasing their code back into the XFree86 code base.
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President of the XFree86 Joins Precision Insight More

President of the XFree86 Joins Precision Insight

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  • I love seeing people get paid for writing OSS... I'm wondering though, will PI get into the OS$ (Open Source $upport) biz? I can imagine them either doing X support direct or thru commercial distro companies on a model similar to RH's support structure...


    Your Working Boy,
  • With all the hype surrounding Xf86 4.0 and all the video card manufactures helping out I wonder if there is anyway that we could get Legit DVD decoding support. I mean some of the video cards out there have it built in. I hope that they think about doing this. Maybe after the court thing is settled we can get atleast binary only drivers in Linux and other os'es. Just a thought....I want my DVD to work in Linux!
    Natas of
    -=Pedophagia=-
    http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
    Also Admin of
  • There's no need for them to do support: unlike many other Linux players, they already have a solid source of income. Hardware manufacturers can't sell cards without drivers, and often only have very minimal internal development resources, so they tend to be delighted to outsource this work to anyone who is willing to take it on. As it becomes increasingly important to sell cards to the growing hordes of Linux users, and since most existing PC video manufacturers lack any experience in this area, I don't think Precision Insight will have any shortage of work to keep them busy...
  • You're either clueless or a troll. Either way, check your facts before you post such absurd claims.
    ________________________________

  • Re:Great! (Score:5)

    by Caballero ( 11938 ) <daryll.daryll@net> on Thursday January 13, 2000 @07:01AM (#1376550) Homepage

    Actually, Precision Insight has been trying to open up our development process as much as possible. We've recently setup a site on SourceForge called dri.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net] that has the latest public XFree release and ALL our development. In fact, it is our primary CVS repository at this point.

    So, I hope you see that PI is trying to not only do open source development, but also do it in as open a development model as possible.

    - |Daryll

  • Re:Good news or bad news? (Score:5)

    by Caballero ( 11938 ) <daryll.daryll@net> on Thursday January 13, 2000 @07:02AM (#1376551) Homepage

    David will be doing pretty much the same work as he did before. His first priority at Precision Insight is to get XFree 4.0 out the door.

    - |Daryll

  • what's so good about it?
  • If I remember right, on one of the other XFree articles, someone mentioned that the change to plug-in modules would probably result in more open development, since individual driver modules could be binary or closed but the core program would be available.
  • Actully, this issue is a bit of problematic. All of those companies singed multiple NDA's in order to make DVD playable on those cards..

    I would like to ask people to send me email addresses of contact people on various companies (Matrox, Nvidia, S3, ATI etc..) so I can ask polity companies for the info to be released under NDA, and also ask people who got some Linux and DVD programming knowledge to contact me by email, so we'll have a group of people who can write a binary only program/modules to play the DVD's on various cards..

    Later, if the situation will allow, we'll ask those companies to release what can be released - under Open source..

    Think you can help? email me (hetz-home@cobol2java.com).

    Thanks

  • Re:Good news or bad news? (Score:5)

    by franklamonica ( 44560 ) on Thursday January 13, 2000 @07:19AM (#1376555) Homepage
    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

  • Details on how to become an XFree86 developer can be found here:

    http://www.xfree86.org/developer.html

    Okay, so it's not completely open access (you do have to become an "official" developer), but as has been pointed out before, this is because they're operating under a number of NDAs, and so *can't* just hand out the source straight out of CVS to just anyone.

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • PI has a deal with Matox to get out some XFree86 G400 drivers. They are supposedly gonna be open source and support DualHead.

    See www.tech-report.com for the details.

    -Wintermute
  • Guess I should have read a little furthur down first... :-)

    -Wintermute
  • Something that was tossed around awhile back was very similar to this. A company like RedHat or VA (with some money to sink into Linux projects) would, under NDA, develop a legitimate DVD driver for the Linux kernel. Then just about anybody could write an interface (read: player) to the driver. The interface could be totally GPL'ed while the binary kernel module would be the only thing non-free. It sounded like a good idea to me anyway... Of course, if we get this whole DeCSS thing worked out then it won't matter, will it?

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Can somebody moderate the Frank Rizzo Post and the one titled "Llama Story" down so they don't appear on top? Thanks.
  • Really ? Well, I sent them an e-mail over 3 weeks ago, but never got anything back. On all the bugreports I wrote them: nothing but their automated response. They are quite incommunicado and I find it impossible to get in.
    ------------------------------------------------ --------
    UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
  • Binary kernel modules = x86 only

    No thanks. I'm an Alpha Linux guy. I suspect the PPC folks and others wouldn't like it either. Every time someone comes out with "binary only" stuff, they only target x86.
  • If it were VA, then I could see x86 only, but RedHat certainly isn't x86-centric... I dunno, I guess it's all theory right now.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • I wonder why you Linux people insist that binary-only is bad. Sure you can't use it on different archs, but what does the vast majority of people running linux have? Maybe for server stuff, but you don't use DVD on a server. If a bunch of people can talk Redhat into getting an NDA and releasing binary-only drivers, then good for them. 99% of the people are happy, and those who whine about the binary-only drivers can just write their own. It still better than what you have now which is 100% of the people dissatisfied. You say that DVD on linux "mostly" works. Thats the problem. With a lot of linux drivers for new stuff, everything "mostly" works, but not much works really well.
  • The arguement can be used against Linux as a whole:
    Most people use Windows, Why should companies release their specs to a small group of people?

    People don't like x86. The only reason I'm still using it is becasue of binary programs.

    Ideally there'd be minimal DVD stuff in the Kernel andas modules anyway. so that the DVD stuff can be compiled on Unix (and clones), rather than just Linux.

  • Who cares if you like it or not? They could still do it and help the other 99% of us out.

    You forget the number of issues related with binary-only modules... namely Linus, Alan Cox, et. al would help you not one iota. The reasoning being that the Linux source code should not be held hostage by modules for which they can't see the code, even though the binary module owners have all the access they want to the kernel source.

    You can make all the arguments you want till your blue in the face supporting binary-only... the negatives quite frankly far outway any positive effects that "you" may get.

    BTW I myself have a x86 box... so yes it would "help" me too, but it's help I'd rather not have. As far as driver-level code goes in Linux, it's GPL or bust. End of argument.

  • The main reason that binary-only is bad on Linux is that the driver interface is completely unstable. Any particular binary driver works only with a single kernel revision, and is obsolete practically as soon as it's released.

    This is a political question -- Linus won't create a stable driver interface precisely to force driver vendors to release the source. If you donate the source, maintenance is freely performed by the Linux community. If you don't, it's a support nightmare.

    There's probably quite a few Linux users who don't like this approach, but ultimately, it's Linus' call.
    --
  • Really ? Well, I sent them an e-mail over 3 weeks ago, but never got anything back. On all the bugreports I wrote them: nothing but their automated response. They are quite incommunicado and I find it impossible to get in.

    First, I exactly know how you feel, as I was very pissed about getting no answer a year ago. One tends to think "these dorks rejected me without no explanation" or similiar. However I tried a second time last winter and this time managed to join. Looking from the other side of fence, the situation looks a bit differently.

    There is a bunch of people trying to improve the codebase itself. However these are volunteers mostly.

    Can't say I cared much about the internal structures yet (like most seem to do I have a day job and thus not too much free time, it is bad enough I am addicted to /. :), so don't take the following as 100% true:

    The administrative work, like handling applications is done by probably two people. And those tend to be pretty much overloaded with work.

    So it is quite likely that your mail is in the queue still.

    Regarding your bugs, I can't tell you definitive wisdom either (as I had not come to watch what happens with incoming bugs), but my guess is that they go into an internal mailing list and are picked up by volunteers as well.

    In short: Try again and keep those patches incoming. (Send me private mail and I try to find out what happened to them)

    It is rather a case of bad PR than mischief or arrogance.

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