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Graphics Software

Weather Channel Sponsors OSS ATI Radeon Drivers 230

Posted by michael from the cold-front-coming-in-from-the-west dept.
jvmatthe writes "Jens Owen of Tungsten Graphics (mostly former VA Linux/Precision Insight employees) posted to the DRI developer's mailing list with some excellent news about the future of DRI drivers for the ATi Radeon 8500 video card: "The Weather Channel is funding TG to develop an open source 3D DRI driver for the ATI Radeon 8500 graphics card. The driver will be released to the XFree86 Project around Q4 of 2002, to be distributed to the public in future versions of the XFree86 X Server." Presumably this means that this Weather Channel is the one footing the bill for the development. Given that the current Linux support for the 8500 is limited to a binary-only driver that is intended for a related professional-level card, the delivery of an open driver is excellent news. This is also listed at the bottom of the TG project page."
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Weather Channel Sponsors OSS ATI Radeon Drivers More

Weather Channel Sponsors OSS ATI Radeon Drivers

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  • Makes sense. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pirodude ( 54707 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:37AM (#3667684)
    They're probably intrested in new and interesting graphics for their channel and most of their software probably runs on a system that uses Xwindows. By funding the development they not only get the drivers they need but also get to help out the community.
    • Why support ATI only?

      Why not use existing drivers for other video cards instead? (like NVIDIA)

      Did they buy a stack of these ATI 8500 cards only to discover they won't do what they need to do?

      • Re:Doesn't make sense (Score:2, Informative)

        by ianezz ( 31449 )
        Why support ATI only?

        ATI releases specifications of its hardware to developers.

        An open DRI driver for Radeon 8500 (which seems to be completely different from Radeon 8800 wrt 3D) based on specs given by ATI has been in the work for some months, but development has been somewhat slow, and it's not ready yet (2D works fine, though).

        In the meantime, ATI also released a (proprietary) driver for Radeon 8800 that seems also to provide 3D acceleration for Radeon 8500.

        NVIDIA, OTOH, does not release specs, but only proprietary drivers, so there's little if no hope of seeing open drivers for that hardware no matter how much money is thrown at it.

        Personally, when I'm asked what video cards are best supported by XFree86, I usually reply "buy an ATI or a Matrox: both have a long tradition of releasing specifications to developers".

        • OSS zealots will most likely mod me down for saying this, but most of it is the truth mixed with a little bit of my own opinion. ;-)

          It always bothers me a little when I hear people say stuff like this. The truth is, as has been stated by NVIDIA many times, that there are patents shared by NVIDIA with other companies that have been used in the development of they video cards. One of these companies is, most likely, SGI. They can't open source their drivers without violating confidentiality agreements and opening themselves to, justified, lawsuits.

          Yes they only release binary drivers, and it would be much nicer if they would release the source as well but when it comes right down to it their drivers are vastly better than any other 3D drivers out there. Unlike all other Linux drivers for 3D cards NVIDIA's drivers are about equivalent in performance with their windows counterparts (this is as of the last time I saw a benchmark, I've heard rumors that they may be faster now). Granted, this doesn't help people on non-x86 Linux or on a *BSD (and no, I don't believe *BSD is dying. :-p ) but you are being slightly less than honest when you give out a blanket statement to people that ATI or Matrox is best supported. That person is asking you for information and, instead, you are giving them your opinion dressed up to look like fact. A more truthful way to answer that question would be to ask them what kind or hardware/OS they plan on using and then to tell them that NVIDIA is best supported for x86 Linux and that ATI Matrox are best supported for all other platforms. If you must push your own OSS agenda, then follow up the statement with an explanation of why you think people should support ATI and Matrox because of the way in which they support the OSS community.

          Well, that's just my $0.02. I personally believe in OSS, though I don't really believe in the extremism of people like RMS. I also believe that there is a place in the world for non-OSS in certain places as well as understanding for companies that simply are incapable of supporting OSS for external reasons beyond their control (such as legal reasons). I don't mean for this to come off as a flame so much as a friendly rebuttal. :-)

          -GameMaster
          • I don't really buy the patent thing since patents are "open source" by default. March into the patent office and ask to see a patent. Or check patents from one of the websites that have them archived. With a patent you're actually disclosing the method..

      • Re:Doesn't make sense (Score:2, Insightful)

        by shepd ( 155729 )
        >Why not use existing drivers for other video cards instead? (like NVIDIA)

        Because the broadcast studio will expect this hardware to be in use for at least half a decade. They aren't like PC users -- I wouldn't expect them to be throwing out their hardware every couple of years.

        So, what happens when NVidia does a 3dfx? It took less than that amount of time for 3dfx to go from hero to zero, so it certainly can happen again.

        You guessed it, they have to buy all new hardware from a vendor that is intelligent enough to provide open source drivers if they expect to ever update X, had they gone with NVidia.

        For a broadcast studio, this could mean millions, not to mention that the downtime will cost even more dearly.

        With open source, and open hardware specs The Weather Channel can expect a smooth ride should they find new software incompatible with their existing drivers. All they have to do is update them themselves. They don't have to wait days or weeks for another company to fix it for them (assming they are still in business).

    • Re:Makes sense. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by #undefined ( 150241 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @12:25PM (#3668770)
      this is great to see as this has been touted (by others and myself) to be where open source makes the most sense to a company: non-business-core computer software.

      the weather channel's primary business is grabbing eyeballs (to sell itself to cable companies or to sell air-time through commercials during its segments) and it does that through weather forecasting.

      video drivers are not the mainstay of their business, but definitely help them in their business. the weather channel doesn't care about selling video drivers. that's not their business. they just need video drivers. and they can pay someone else to create those video drivers and then give the source code away without "selling the farm": giving away a business secret to a competitor.

      this would be the same as a music production company paying someone to produce open source drivers for a sound card. the company gets drivers, free support from the community, and yet doesn't give away its secrets or the upper hand to competitors. it's a win-win situation for the company and the community.

      this is how i expect to see open source prevail in the future: companies paying for open source development that aids their business (but is not their sole business), and the action being justified by knowing that the open source community (that has an interest in the developed software) will support (to some degree) the software.

      in the weather channel's case, this made perfect sense.
      • While I pretty much agree with this, my answer is: "well sorta".

        There is a considerable fraction of the business managers in the world that would say that the Weather Channel just paid for driver development for all their competitors. That is, their competitors will now have the same drivers (some of which need them just as much as TWC), but they didn't have to spend the time or the money on it. Thus, they now have a competitve advantage.

        I think that this is somewhat backwards thinking, but I can't totally disagree either. Also, most people's bosses wouldn't disagree, and that is a major issue.
  • Why?

    How exactly is this little charity project going to benefit the Weather Channel?

    • Maybe weather.com owns stock in ATI, and since money isn't in software.. the hardware aspect may force the "not-so-spendy" *nix people into buying physical devices. Useful video drivers for *nix are comparable to gold, and the opensource variety more than doubles the value.
    • The same way advertising does.

      I think this may be a rather inventive way of advertising. Sponsorship. It has "worked" for decades in sports, why not in open source?

      What would be cute is if they had a "Brought to you by..." message during the splash screen for the driver.

      • Linux over cheap hardware SAVES THEM MONEY (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Like any other company, they probably weighed the cost of replacing their 5000 SGI boxes with something else. Found that this video card produced a very good benefit at low cost (especially compared to the SGI) but had poor support.

        Think about them now buying 5000 cheap AMD rackmounts to put in cabletv headends around the country. Shareholders are saving a fortune - I bet they save a mint compared to the cost of taking the proprietary route.

        The fact that they're willing to release the fruits of their labour is just an added plus. They 'get it'.

        On a related microsoft-bashing note - imagine deploying 5000 lights-out, 'rock solid' NT boxes around the country in cable-tv headends all over the country. This is actually a great case study in the reliability and manageability requirements that these guys have and how linux beat out nt and other unix-like environments.

        Oh, sorry, I mean GNU/Linux haha

        • Weather Channel headend rackmounts (Score:5, Informative)

          by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @04:38AM (#3667959) Homepage
          A few points to add to this excellent post...

          The Weather Channel's current headend rackmount machines are based on the Silicon Graphics O2. SGI has announced the End Of Production of the O2 and O2+, they will no longer be made as of November 2002. There is no similar replacement. The O2 was/is one hell of a video box... it's performance and capabilites were great for NTSC/PAL resolution video... that's what the box was designed for. But alas, there really is no replacement... The closest thing is the Octane2, but it's almost 3x the size... 2-4x the cost, uses about 3x the power.... and the only video option available for Octane is very expensive as it does mutliple channels of HD and SD video. There really is no O2 replacement.

          I'm sure the Weather Channel has bought a few extras (they've already bought thousands) but is seeking some newer/better/cheaper alternative. Because the station, it's workstations, headends, and its network is mostly Unix based (mostly SGI IRIX, some HP-UX), Linux makes sense... especially with some of SGI's opensource offerings (XFS, Failsafe, and others).

          What's interesting is that The Weather Channel continues to buy big SGI Origin servers and wiz-bang workstations (Octane2, Fuel) for internal use. It's also interesting to note that they are still in the process of upgrading many of the older headends to the latest (O2 based) hardware and newer software revisions.

          I don't think they'll be switching really soon... but it is very cool to see that it's going to be a friendly community effort.
          • I don't know the hardware well enough to say what's "comparable" to the O2, but there's a good reason it's the last of its type -- it's a money loser. Like all of SGIs desktop systems, the O2 just couldn't compete with comodity systems. It makes sense for SGI to concentrate on massively-parallel systems, where there's less competition.
      • > What would be cute is if they had a "Brought to you by..." message
        > during the splash screen for the driver.

        Ah, but the X11 license would allow you to change the source quite easily. No more stupid splash screens (although, I have grown kind of fond of the NVidia splash). Thank God for Open Source.
      • When so many corporations have the ability to engage in philanthropy don't you think something is wrong?
        • Philanthropy ain't got nothin' to do with it.

          Plug "weather channel open source" into google, check a few articles, find out how heavily TWC has been relying on open source for at least the last 2 years (like replacing several NT boxes with one Linux box), realise what they're really doing is looking out for number 1.

          Open source has saved them a bundle, so if doing this for their own benefit has the side effect of helping others, I'm sure they still feel that they're getting the best part of the deal.

          Hmm, let's see. Weather Channel provides detailed advance information and education on severe weather, which contributes to increase in public safety. How about a new public discussion. "Which saves more lives, open source or the MS way of doing things?"

      • It has already been done by Hans Reiser, and the OSS community didn't quite enjoy it...
        The reiserfs sponsor banner shouted its sponsors at kernel startup, but it has been replaced by a discreet "Check www.reiserfs.org for sponsor information".
        Here's the log:

        Checking ReiserFS transaction log (device 03:02) ...
        Replayed 1 transactions in 4 seconds
        ReiserFS core development sponsored by SuSE Labs (suse.com)
        Journaling sponsored by MP3.com
        Item handlers sponsored by Ecila.com
        ReiserFS version 3.5.18

  • Huh? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tunah ( 530328 )
    This is great news and all, but it makes no sense.

    What do graphics drivers have to do with the weather?

    • You are ignorant. What do graphics cards have to do with weather? Well, weather prediction involves complex 3-Dimensional modeling. Thus requires fast polygon rendering. And perhaps this mean that instead of 2D overheads, we will be able to 'zoom' through a storm. This would benefit pilots, who fly at different altitudes depending on weather.

  • Weather Channel (Score:3, Informative)

    by jackh1 ( 198422 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:43AM (#3667700)
    Hi The Weather channel bought about 5000 rackmount SGI O2's a few years ago and now they need replacing Jack.
    • TWC uses a system called WSI for their weather graphics. They have been almost exclusively SGI based, except for some systems based on Solaris. (just systems to ingest data) They are starting to use some systems from Dell but I'm not sure of their purpose. (rendering I think) WSI support hasn't been the best. Oh who am I kidding, they suck! Perhaps TWC is going to start building their own systems?
    • Exactly how powerfull do you think an o2 is compared to an 8500 and a 2 ghz x86 chip for what the weather channel is doing? I mean if it was a full blown onyx 2000 setup with 512 procs I would understand.

    • Re:Weather Channel (Score:3, Informative)

      by green pizza ( 159161 )
      Exactly how powerfull do you think an o2 is compared to an 8500 and a 2 ghz x86 chip for what the weather channel is doing?

      On-air weather graphics don't take too much horsepower to produce... especially when "your local weather" is only show about once every eight minutes... much of which is repeat data.

      The Weather Channel buys a great deal of model data from various providers and also grinds its own data with several gigantic SGI Origin servers and a big HP box. The rackmount headend machines simply display the data that's been sent to them. Sure, there's some rendering work done before display, but it's pretty basic.

      SGI recently announced [slashdot.org] the end of production of the O2 and O2+.... and there really is no replacement. It only makes sense that The Weather Channel is seeking alternatives, especially cheaper alternatives. Their current system works quite well and they're still upgrading much older machines (the old white text on blue background and low-res non-animated map displays) and constantly tweaking software.

  • Very good news (Score:2, Insightful)

    by daserver ( 524964 )
    This is great news and I really hope this will be the start for more open source drivers. The graphics acceleraters marked moves very fast, what was fast 1 year ago won't run the latest games today. We need drivers before the card is released or when it's released like they have in windows (the latest radeon drivers has support for rv300). Not something like 1 year after it's released.
    • Well, nvidia's move towards a common architecture on most of their graphics cards solves the problem of developing a driver for one videocard and having that videocard immediatly outdated...unfortunately, their Linux drivers are binary-only, and ATI seem to be making no moves (as far as I know) to implement a similar strategy on their graphics cards.
      • IIRC, ATI has moved to a unified driver similar to NVidia's. There is one driver for each platform (Radeon, Rage) for each OS. This isnt as "unified" as NVidia's strategy, but still a great improvement and a demonstration that there can be further unification in the future.

        This is part of the reason that they have been able to release new cards so quickly with drivers that dont suck.

  • I just don't get it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jrwillis ( 306262 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @02:50AM (#3667727) Homepage
    Is it just me or is the world getting more surreal every day? I mean we now have everything from Russia joining NATO to The Weather Channel supporting drivers for my video card. Things are just getting to weird for me.
    • that Reality is not ficticious. After all, Fiction has to make sense...
    • I don't think things will get really weird until the communists come up with their own linux distribution.

      wait a minute...
    • This actually makes a bit of sense to me. I was at a IBM DeveloperWorld conference where the CTO of the weather channel was a pannel speaker. And he was very greatful to IBM and the Apache foundation and all the other people out there who had worked on the software that runs their platform. He seemed like a really decent guy and this might just be their way of saying thanks.
  • The linux games status is in a bad circle: users won't run linux for games because there is none and big game companies won't released games for linux because there is no marked for it.

    And tell you what DirectX surely doesn't help this, lets hope more drivers will.
    • what are you talking about? winex is a huge project and ID software loves Linux, they are making Doom III a native game like they did for Q3a and RTCW, I was playing max payne like 5 min ago in winex. and tomshardware has proved that the nvidia drivers are faster in linux than windows. Currently Nvidia makes the best 3d Opengl drivers to bad they are binary! Gotta love opensource
      • Interesting you should mention Doom III... If you go read the actual announcement post [sourceforge.net] (why wasn't this linked in the story itself, btw?), you'll soon see the follow-up from a certain Timothee Besset... With a very, shall we say, relevant company name in his e-mail address. Heh. There's hope, at least.

        I wonder how big the chances are that a driver for the 8500 generation of hardware is any use on the upcoming "R300" chip, though. It would be so annoying if, once there is a driver, it's one generation behind. *Sigh*.
    • Hey, I just pre-ordered my copy of Neverwinter Nights from TuxGames [tuxgames.com], which coincidentally was $5 USD cheaper (even after shipping) than any other e-tailer. I dont know about you, but most games worth playing that have come out recently have had Linux support.

      There is still a long way to go (Jedi Knight 2, etc.) but no platform wins out of the starting gate, and gaming on Linux is relatively young. I will keep buying the games that support Linux (and browse my campus net for the ones that dont!).
  • Tonight, The Weather Channel pays for open-source Radeon drivers. Next week...
    • McDonald's foots the bill for the development of an open-source DVD player
    • Disney sponsors open-source DRM
    • Microsoft buys Disney and turns open-source DRM into a .NET service

  • I am going to watch the Weather Channel now ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @03:03AM (#3667768) Journal


    As a support to the Open Source community, I am gonna do my part, by watching the Weather Channel now.

    Yeah, call me a brown-nose, but that's the least I can do, right ? :)

  • Flaws in Open Source Software model? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 09, 2002 @03:08AM (#3667778)
    *cough* *cough*

    I hope you're reading this, Mr J Carroll. Sometimes, open source programmers can *get paid* as well as further the communal good.
    • So between this and the example in the rebuttal article, that's two. How many abandoned projects are there on sourceforge and freshmeat?
      • How many abandoned projects are there on sourceforge and freshmeat?

        Probably less than the number of failed IT and internet companies in the past decade. The majority failed at that same planning stage, too. On SF, they have a webpage that is slowly rotting away - but that anybody can pick up and go forward with. The conventional software companies have a business plan in a nice folder from Office Depot - now rotting deep inside a landfill somewhere, known only to those whom it was pitched to.

        As for the ones that have a working codebase, I'd still guess there were more companies that made somewhere between one month and 24 months worth of payroll before going belly up - and those codebases are pretty much lost.

        --
        Evan

        • On SF, they have a webpage that is slowly rotting away - but that anybody can pick up and go forward with.
          Point. But.... Venture a guess as to how many of these 'ready to pick up' projects are a) functional, b) worth figuring out, and trying to adapt, rather than simply writing your own, or c) portable/adaptable in general.
          • Very few. However you can pick out quite a few things from them as a mass of data (for instance, a MMPORG is harder than it appears in the mirror) or you can cherrypick interesting and nice features from otherwise unpopular projects, the way many Window Managers cross polinate.

            My point was less about the viability, and more about being able to see prior failures and learn from them. That, and the fact that the traditional software development cycle probably has a comparable or higher failure rate (needing profitability and VC and so on is yet another set of variables that, if not satisfied, results in failure. OS software has politics and communication hurdles, yes, but those exist in traditional development as well).

            --
            Evan

            • Yes, but once again, is it worth to invest the time to sift through the oceans of crap to find the occasional pearl? OSS is *theoretically* a wonderful idea. Time will yet tell if it's *in reality* equally wonderful.
              • How do you sift through the oceans of crappy traditional software? There have been hundreds, if not over a thousand, propietary text editors... the same goes for databases, word processors, and spreadsheets. And although there has often been one package dominating the market (Visicalc, Lotus 1-2-3, Excel), which package that is changes over time.

                So, in the same way, by word of mouth, popular magazine editors, and now websites, you sift through for the pearls. OSS even has a unique way - so call distros, which pick and choose software to include in the core installation.

                --
                Evan

  • ati drivers (Score:3, Informative)

    by loraksus ( 171574 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @03:26AM (#3667823) Homepage
    Probably the drivers will be better than the ones ati works on - no, not the bastardized compatible drivers, but any drivers coming out of the ati labs.

    A tounge in cheek thing, if you own an ati card you probably know what I'm talking about, damn good hardware, piss poor software.
    Bleh.
  • Are we talking about the same company that introduced me to pop-up windows, pop-under windows, then propelled me into the world of trucks driving around my web-browser?

    The same company that was 'carefully evaluating' this technology which changes my browser into a billboard [slashdot.org]?

    And now this?!
  • You think that maybe they could find someone to fund the development of windows drivers that don't suck?
    • Well if the drivers and the hardware interface are open, go ahead and do it yourself. Whatever happened to writing your own drivers, sheesh kids these days.
  • This is exactly how it's supposed to work when it works right...people contributing what they have to help where they can... and if your a company that uses opensource solutions you can contribute a cash donation to opensource developers to keep the opensource goodness flowing.If you can't donate cash donate hardware, keep it coming and what you give will be returned to you in the form of software.


    Which I believe Eric Raymond refers to as gift culture.

  • That I'm going to get a little ticker on the bottom of my screen every 5 mins with the current temps inside my case, along with an extended outlook of up times and down times?

  • already 2D support for 8500 (Score:3, Informative)

    by unsinged int ( 561600 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @04:47AM (#3667976)
    Given that the current Linux support for the 8500 is limited to a binary-only driver that is intended for a related professional-level card, the delivery of an open driver is excellent news.

    I think this part is a bit misleading. XFree86 4.2 has support for several ATI 8500 chips, and there are and have been Radeon drivers in the Linux kernel that work with it. From what I remember reading when I got my card working (yes, I'm running an ATI 8500 under Linux with no problems) all of the 2D support is there, and some limited 3D support.

    I agree more open source work for this card is good news, but that sentence almost makes it sound like you can't use the 8500 well with Linux at this point.

  • weather modeling vs weather display (Score:5, Informative)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @04:56AM (#3667994) Homepage
    There are two very different sides to modern weather modeling and display...

    1) The acutal hardcore computation (done on huge, non-graphical SGI, HP, and Cray boxes with more GB of ram than I have harddrive space).

    2) The on-air graphics boxes that make pretty pictures for television and website weather.

    The first requires insane amounts of CPU, large caches, lots of ram, and gobs of thruput between CPUs. The second requires graphics hardware capable of generating television-resolution static images or a few frame of animation from pre-processed data.

    Both areas are constantly growing, especially the back-end number crunching. On air graphics continue to become more complex, especially with 3D cloud displays that some weather reports show. But even the SGI O2, introduced in 1996 and ending production in 2002, is more than powerful enough for this task. The Weather Channel is working on putting together a solution to eventually replace their 5000 rackmount O2s located across the country in cable headends generating on-air graphics ("and now your local forecast"). They're also getting ready for HD televison resolutions... something the O2 cannot handle (the Octane can, but that'll cost ya $40K). As a side note, there really is no O2 replacement.... the O2 was a really nifty box for rendering OpenGL direct to NTSC/PAL video out without having to go thru hoops or do any software/hardware hackery.

  • for gaming though? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by 2ms ( 232331 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @06:23AM (#3668119)
    There are drivers, and then there are drivers that you actually want to play games with.

    On account of ATI's generally/traditionally superior image quality, I'd get a Radeon over a Geforce if it weren't for that nvidia linux drivers actually take advantage of all the card's hardware features. My experience with owning an older Radeon has been that even the most concerted DRI efforts haven't put half of the Radeon's features into effect. Thus, I do not want to play games in linux with my radeon.

    Is it possible that The Weather Channel will get the Radeon's gaming features working in full? If not, then this doesn't really change anything for Radeons in linux.

    If you don't care about gaming, then this news isn't very notable because the 2D is already good. Otherwise, any incompleteness of 3D features will just perpetuate the Radeon's status as pointless for linux when geforce available.

    On the other hand, it's true that nothing comes close to radeons in the mobile department (considering things like their low energy consumption on dvd accel). So I guess there definately are people compelled to buy a radeon despite superiority of geforce drivers, who must we welcoming of any and everything they can get in radeon support.
  • Great, so when ATI ships their new stuffs, the R250 and R300 chips, later this summer, Linux users will still be waiting for this corporate handout driver for the "old" 8500.

    I think that I could get used to Nvidia's way of doing things...
    • and use binary only drivers?? huh??

      wasn't the entire point of linux to have a bunch of open source drivers?? (mind you, the thing we keep calling linux is actually only the kernel itself.)

      Lets see now, on one hand we have a bunch of binary only drivers that are unstable as crap supporting the next-generation GPU. And on the other hand we have community created open source drivers that are pretty damn stable supporting the 2nd generation chipset??

      Sunny Dubey

      PS: ask any linux laptop user who has an nvidia video card, on how badly nvidia has fucked them over

  • The most exciting thing about this (Score:5, Insightful)

    by evilpenguin ( 18720 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @12:06PM (#3668717)
    To me, the most exciting thing about this is that it may be the first example of what I believe is a coming shift in the economics of software. Right now, software is treated as a product like almost any other manufactured product. Programmers are laborers and they produce product for consumption.

    Free Software turns this around. Programmers become professionals more like engineers, architects, and doctors. They are paid for the quality of their practice, not as units of production in a manufacturing enterprise. One of the most common complaints about Open Source and Free Software is that it is anti-capital and that it will put programmers out of work (or at least out of pay). I think that is just plain wrong. Most programmers working today do not work for software companies. Most work in MIS making systems of hardware and software fit the needs of specific businesses.

    This is the first case I know of where a company that is not at all in the software industry is paying programmers to develop software that they need that will directly benefit them AND anyone else who wants to use it. (Several companies like RedHat and Mandrake have done the same over the last few years, but they are, at least in some hybrid sense, in the software industry).

    I think this will happen more and more. This is happening right now only because Free Software and Open Source software must be being used at the Weather Channel widely enough that they need these drivers. Once Free Software reaches critical mass (I know: It's an abused term and I'm abusing it right now) this will happen more and more. Eventually it will make almost all kinds of software available for "free" (and Free) and programmers will be paid well for doing it. Instead of 21st century robber barons amassing gigantic fortunes for herding programmers together, thousands of programmers around the world will make more money than they do now developing software for "Free."

    Why? Bcause computers and software have no inherent value. Their value comes only in how they improve the efficiency of other processes, or enable processes that could not be done without them. They are tools. They are used to make and do other things. It is this economic "amplification" effect that makes them valuable. Sure, there is some value in the software economy, but the efficiency boom that gave us the longest post-war economic expansion without substantial inflation wasn't entirely based on Microsoft's profits (or even slightly based on them. As rich as Microsoft is, they are just a drop in the bucket of the economy). No, it was the way the technology tools improved productitivty throughout the economy. They whole software industry (and by that I mean people who develop code industrially and keep it closed, raising the price by creating an artificial shortage) could vanish and be replaced by free software and programmers and the economy as a whole would get richer.

    How will programmers get paid? Like this case.

    So a company has to pay $150,000 to get something developed. If all the other software they use is both Free and free (libre and free? Free speech and Free beer?), they may well end up spending less on software while programmers get that reduced amount of money with little or no corporate overhead.

    It becomes a profession, not an industrial enterprise.

    My bit of pie-in-the-sky thinking for today...

  • My hope: (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MsGeek ( 162936 ) on Sunday June 09, 2002 @01:18PM (#3668984) Homepage Journal
    ATI finally releases specs for their hardware DVD acceleration, if not out in the open, at least to this project. Their hardware DVD acceleration is GREAT in Windows. You can actually run a DVD-ROM on a Pentium 233MMX if you want to using one of their video cards if you don't mind not using the computer for anything else while the DVD plays.

    ATI is to be commended for their relative openness compared to NVidia and Matrox. I think they have a ways to go on being cooperative, however since there are only a finite number of video card manufacturers they should be encouraged.

    ATI should also be encouraged to find better coders for their Windows driver products, but that's another story for another place and time entirely.

    • ATI is to be commended for their relative openness compared to NVidia and Matrox.

      While I agree that ATi's willingness to release specs is heartening, I don't think you give Matrox enough credit. They have a pretty good history [matrox.com] of cooperating with open source developers. I think they keep some portions of their linux drivers closed (DualHead maybe?), but by and large they have been quite supportive of OSS.

    • Despite what people think about the other parts of an ATI graphics card chipset, you have to admit that ATI almost single-handedly killed off the need for a dedicated decoder card in terms of DVD playback for computers with AGP ports. Their support for both hardware motion compensation (HWMC) and Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform (iDCT) starting with the Rage 128 chipset meant you saved some 35-40% of CPU cycles decoding DVD's compared to an all-software solution using WinDVD or PowerDVD.

      And everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon, too. Note that the nVidia's GeForce4 MX and GeForce4 Ti chipsets and the new Matrox Parhelia chipset have at least HWMC and iDCT support for DVD decoding.

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