Hey Marc,
you know better than this! I see no different between cutting a trace and soldering in a new wire (HW hacking) compared to changing a few lines of code...
Ideas ARE a lot easier to share, but then instructions for hacking commercial HW becomes the material...
IC's are pretty hard to hack...
HW companies think there software "reveals" certain secrets of their HW they don't want the comptetitors to know about. I imagine they could try harder to hide the secrets and create some 3rd party interface. Actually with the nv driver there open-src parts allow anyone to change the parameters of the driver using a documented protocol.. pretty neat... I still don't know what nvidia is trying to hide...
B.
Marc Lavallée wrote:
Le 17 Août 2005 09:44, cyrille henry a écrit :
B. Bogart a écrit :
honestly I would really love to bring only free software (damn, my nvidia driver would break the rules anyhow...) to piksel.
haha, this is an important point : how many people at pixel will use free driver? moreover : and how many people will use free HARDWARE? i don't think there is a lot's of diference between hardware and software : it's just an other job, but same problematic.
Software can be modified, hardware can't. It's easier to sell and buy physical goods (like food), but it's easier to share ideas, so harware companies consider their drivers as being part of their hardware. They are so wrong... One day, we will build our own hardware based on shared ideas and software. -- Marc
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