AMD to open source ATI drivers

[siimo]

http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/...OPcurve_1.html

I don't know how accurate this article is but it mentions AMD is considering open sourcing a subset of ATI drivers!

if it is true, its a start.

WOOT!

[Jucato]

If it is indeed true, then I might be switching to ATI soon.

I'd take it with a grain of salt, for now. At least until another news source makes a similar article, without linking to this one.

[Rackerz]

Sorry I'm not exactly good with stuff like this, what would this mean for the ATI drivers?

[PatrickMay16]

Sorry I'm not exactly good with stuff like this, what would this mean for the ATI drivers?

I'm not so good with this stuff either, but I think this would mean that the free open source ATI driver in X.org may be improved due to better knowledge of the cards gained through viewing the source of these official drivers. It may also mean that the official ATI drivers will improve in quality.

Whoa! FACKIN' OUT. This is pretty cool. AMD rocks.

[Mathias-K]

Sorry I'm not exactly good with stuff like this, what would this mean for the ATI drivers?

If the ATI drivers were open sourced, they could be included on the Ubuntu CD. Then the road is clear for having OpenGL things like Xgl, AIGLX and UT2004 work out of the box instead of having to mess with installing the driver first.

[Arisna]

I was hoping AMD would be a good influence on ATI, rather than the opposite and vice-versa. Maybe this is a good sign.

[Jucato]

I'm still hoping that when I wake up tomorrow (night time here), there will be more news articles to confirm this.

If AMD-ATI will open source the video drivers, there will no longer be any moral/legal obstacles in including their binary drivers in all Linux distros. And most of all, RMS will be happy (I hope ).

[Terracotta]

If the drivers are open, ATI's got a new customer. Now I'm going for the nVidia thing but if ATI drivers are open, they can be included in the kernel, which would mean that all ATI-cards supported would work out of the box.

[mips]

ATI does NOT hold the rights to all the source code in their drivers. Some of the the source code is held by 3rd party companies, there will be issues in getting around this unless the rights to that source code can be brought by amd/ati.

[Jucato]

And just when you thought things were about to get better...