On Fri, 15 Feb 2002, MJ Ray wrote:
Adam wrote:
I think the driver is closed source though as lots of their technology is in there so they don't want other gfx card manufacturers to steal it from them.
Oh, I thought it was because they had entered into various patent licensing agreements that cover software used in the accelerated drivers. Insert your own comment about how good software patents are here.
Hmmm, I'm not too sure but i think that the drivers were going to be included in the default release of X-windows 4, but at the last minute they decided they wanted to distribute binarys only as they didn't want to give away their IP. This then held up the release of X4 for a few days while the developers decided what to do. In the end i think they dumped NVidia so they could go ahead with a release.
There is also a possibilty that M$ had a hand in this with NVidia developing core technologys for the X-box.
I really wish that there were more commercial games available for linux so then I wouldn't have to run windows at all :-/