Re: [gNewSense-users] Compatible Video Cards with 3D Acceleration

[Jorge Benavides Escobillana]

Kevin Dean escribió:
> > Can anybody confirm this. Is R200 based cards 3D acceleration supported
> > on gNewSense? Don't contains binary blobs?
>
> r200 contains microcode (binary blobs) that can not bee freely edited.
> The r100 and r200 were written using ATI stuff under Non-disclosure
> agreement. I checked the code myself, which you can do as well in
> radeon_cp.c.
>
> For r200 specifically -> R200_cp_microcode[] which then goes on for
> many lines. It is non-free.

Then this should be notified to the maintainer of the FSF hardware compatibility 
list (http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/video), because there is a link to [2], 
which says that r200 based card are supported.

> > > AMD is promising to release free drivers for newer ATI cards, but it's
> > > not confirmed [3]. Perhaps you could wait and buy a newer ATI card if
> > > free drivers are released.
> > >
> > > [2] http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/ATIRadeon
> > > [3]
> > > 
> > http://enterpriselinuxlog.blogs.techtarget.com/2007/05/09/amd-will-deliver-open-graphics-drivers/ 
>
> I caution people not to fall into this. AMD has announced that they
> will "open source" their drivers, they never said they would make them
> Libre!

That's right, my mistake.

> AMD may very well release fully modifyable, GPL drivers but they might
> not. As of today, they have not, and I wouldn't put my money into a
> product that might NEVER release such things.

I agree.

(Now I realize that I replied the original mail to its sender, not to the list)