[MPlayer-users] Re: Display card recommendations

[D Richard Felker III]

On Tue, Sep 17, 2002 at 08:36:38AM +0200, gabor wrote:
> now let's talk about why are companies releasing closed-source drivers +
> why they don't relelase the specs?
> 
> because for them it would be good too if other people would help them
> develop the drivers etc...... so why?
> 
> i don't want arguments like 'because they're idiots' etc.... 

Several reasons...

1) Some of the advanced 'features' of the card are really features of
   the drivers, which they consider their proprietary technology. Not
   only would releasing the drivers make it easy for someone else to
   duplicate the 'technology' for use with another vendor's card, but
   it would also reveal the fraud that the card doesn't actually have
   the advertised features, but rather just supports them through
   software tricks and emulation in the drivers.

2) They all infringe on each other's patents, so if they released
   drivers (meaning as source) or specs it would make the
   infringements clear and then they'd all sue each other. :) No,
   actually, the one who had the decency to release specs (as they
   should be required to do by law) would get sued, while the other
   two would revel in their new duopoly.

3) Sometimes their lawyers believe they have to keep certain things
   secret, especially stuff related to TVout and Macrovision, since
   they don't want it being disabled except by 'authorized' programs
   or whatever. Look for more of this in the future with "DRM"
   nonsense...

4) As long as people are forced to use their drivers, they can cut
   corners and sacrifice stability, reliability, and image quality for
   speed. If specs are out there, then someone might make drivers that
   don't cut corners and don't hard lock your box, and then the
   benchmarks would show their card being slower than the
   proprietary-driven competition.

5) MY code, MY technology, MY secrets, *wah* *wah* *wAHHH* ...

6) Because it's become the expectation. Lots of people just do what's
   the norm, and companies are no different. If the culture has come
   to be that you refuse to tell your customers how to operate the
   devices they bought, then doing anything different is
   revolutionary, and everyone knows doing something revolutionary can
   get you fired, so better not try that...

All of these reasons vary between the extremes of mostly hypothetical
and totally real, but I think you'll find it believable that pretty
much all of them are running through the minds of some drones in the
marketing and legal departments to some degree or another. These just
came off the top of my head right now; I'm sure you can imagine lots
of other similar (or not-so-similar) reasons why video card vendors
don't release specs.


Rich