NVIDIA driver

[Danial Thom]

--- Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:31:35 -0800 (PST)
> Danial Thom <danial_thom at xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > You don't have a G-d given right to use other
> > people's work without paying a fee for it.
> 
> 	No but having paid for it I expect to be able
> to use it without
> unreasonable restrictions. I also expect to be
> able to make backups so
> that I don't have to pay for it again when the
> media wears out.

Again, another arrogant and ignorant stance.
Somehow paying $99. for thousands of hours worth
of work entitles you to manipulate the code in
any way you want until the end of time? You're
not "buying" the code. You don't own it. You're
just "paying" for a license to use the code, at a
significantly discounted price. Its expected, as
part of the cheap price, that you'll need to buy
another copy when Microsoft gets around to
releasing another OS or you need to upgrade your
hardware. Most companies survive on residuals
more than they do finding new customers.

Trying to keep this in the context of proprietary
hardware drivers, there's a business case to be
made to release your specs and let other people
write drivers (in which case you're risking
someone writing a bad driver (can you say
template programmer Bill Paul?)) and blaming your
hardware for problems, or you can invest
corporate man hours and dollars in writing a
really good driver and developing hardware that
is a unique performer and guarantee that you are
a leader in a particular market without having to
worry that the Acme corp of Taiwan will make some
piece of crap chip that has the same interface as
yours and take away your market share. This
happened to Western Digital back in the 80s when
they had the best ethernet card on the planet and
the taiwanese stole their concept and their
designs and much of their market share with clone
boards. Now they sell hard drives and not much
else. NVIDA selected the second approach, and I'm
sure that they are very glad they did; and I
doubt that they care that the 24 guys running
DFLY BSD have to use something else.

If you want vendors to support your OS, then make
your OS significant. Otherwise you're stuck with
companies with mediocre products who are
desparate to find someone to use them.

DT

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