[Savannah-hackers] Re: submission of Waves, Clouds, and Sand - savannah.nongnu.org

[Mathieu Roy]

address@hidden said:

> > Due to our policy, we can only host your project if it only uses features 
> > that
> > exist in the few free drivers available, for example the ATI Radeon driver
> > distributed by XFree86. ¿Are you willing to keep your software in Savannah
> > usable with such drivers?
> 
> What about features that are part of the OpenGL spec, e.g.
> ARB_vertex_program instead of *_NV or ATI_* ?  Mesa now supports
> OpenGL 1.4.
> 
> > but you should keep those newest features away from Savannah
> > because we do not want to encourage Savannah users to start using
> > the proprietary drivers of ATI and Nvidia.
> 
> I'm concerned that 3D graphics in free software will fall way behind.  At
> the moment, it's mainly proprietary games that take advantage of the newer
> 3D features.  Those projects don't exert much pressure on the hardware
> vendors to release free drivers.  Also, most of those games run only on
> Windows, which encourages users not only to use a proprietary driver, but
> a proprietary program and a proprietary operating system.
> 
> An additional point is that using features of newer cards requires the
> user to own the hardware; they don't buy it to have it sit there in 2D
> mode all day.  Therefore it's unlikely that people with those cards are
> using free drivers at all; they are probably using the vendor's drivers
> which implement a superset of the free driver functionality.  Thus, making
> free software use only a few of these features does not encourage users to
> switch to free drivers, nor does it encourage vendors to release free
> drivers -- after all, all the features used by the free software already
> _ARE_ in the free drivers.  It also makes the free software look rather
> obsolete, which does not encourage people to use it at all, and the
> outdated feature set makes the free program too far behind to be of any
> concern to the 3D vendors as well.
> 
> Since the GNU project would like to replace ALL parts of a proprietary
> system with free versions, this is an opportunity to replace one of the
> proprietary links in the chain.  We can either wait until free drivers are
> available, and at that point begin making free games, scientific
> visualization programs, and simulators that use them; or we can start on
> those projects NOW, so that their release will hopefully coincide with
> the release of those free drivers.
> 
> Having a large number of free 3D programs available which use modern
> hardware capabilities seems to be an improvement over the current
> situtation of only the proprietary programs being able to do so; having
> more users of the free software turns into more developers, and a larger
> installed base means more pressure on 3D vendors to release free specs and
> drivers for their hardware.

The main idea behind the restriction on Savannah is pretty simple:
actually, it is now possible to use a completely free system, as
GNU/Linux exists.

As now this completely free system exists, new bricks to add to this
free system mustn't depend on non-free bricks. It would be adding
proprietary software in the chain.

You said that people having brand new 3d cards do not want to use 2d
graphics. I have an ATI Radeon at home. Indeed, I use them in 3d when
playing at game, that actually are proprietary, running on a
proprietary system.
While I use a free system (98% of the time, when I'm not playing), I
use VESA drivers. Sure I do not take full advantages of my hardware,
sure I do not play tremendous 3d games. But I won't spend time on this
to make my free system dependant. While using proprietary driver on a
system which is 98 % non free does not really disturb me, I would
never add them on a free system... and neither I would promote 3d
games that would incitate me to install proprietary stuff on my free
system to use them. 

If new free 3d games appears to be dependant on proprietary drivers,
3d cards manufacturers will never have interest on contributing on
free drivers.

> > I will keep you project registration on hold until next Sunday,
> > waiting to hear whether you accept the commitment to stay away
> > from proprietary drivers dependencies.
> 
> Also note that if the above doesn't change your mind, then to be
> consistent you are going to have to police all the 3D projects for banned
> feature use.
> 
> I would prefer not to remain isolated, ceding the ground to non-free
> software; the main reason I keep hearing that users dual-boot is for
> games
> .  We were getting some free functionality for ATI hardware until
> they leap-frogged NVidia with the 9700 pro; now that they have the
> performance crown they don't have to make "concessions", and it
> looks like proprietary driver land from hereon out.  Unless, of
> course, we can get enough users to pressure them to release free
> drivers; and making obsolete 3D games isn't going to get us any
> users.
> 
> One last point: This is also a battle between Direct3D and OpenGL.
> Since most Windows developers use Direct3D, we may lose OpenGL
> drivers altogether if we don't have enough OpenGL programs that push
> the envelope.  From what I can tell, we're currently still able to
> use OpenGL thanks to high-visibility projects like Quake/Doom III,
> and special effects studios (ILM, Digital Domain, etc.).  I think we
> need more free software proponents in there as well.

ILM recently accepted to free some software. I think that the good
way.

To promote free drivers, it would be surely helpfull to have
high-visibility projects relying on them.


-- 
Mathieu Roy
 
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