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

[planet10]

> Imagine that a so-called must-have apps make a deal with ATI and NVIDIA:
>  if they free their drivers, the game will use their drivers.
>
> The game is so amazing that both companies want people to buy their
> cards to be able to play the game in a decent way.
> If one of the company do not free their code, people will only buy the
> other one's cards.

What you don't get is that the game uses libGL.so.  Whatever the user has
installed gets used.  The game can't avoid their drivers; only the user
can do that.

The game is also going to be hard-pressed to be graphically amazing when
it's stuck using the free drivers which implement the feature set of two
generations back.

> What you call pressuring is sticking to a policy far from being
> new. The purpose of Savannah is explicitely detailled. If you want the
> GNU project to work on convincing  particular companies, this is not
> the right mailing-list.

Perhaps I'm confused because of your gnu.org e-mail address.  I assumed
Savannah was run on behalf of the GNU project.

So I assumed that I was communicating with someone who has influence with
Savannah, and (to some degree) GNU.  Since you started e-mailing me, I
assumed that you would be a good sounding board to see if I could convince
a strict Free Software advocate that cutting-edge free 3D games could also
help the state of free 3D drivers.

(Of course, it turns out you use proprietary drivers on Windows to play
3D games, but hey...)

> There's one suggestion in my message (making a deal). I'm not saying
> that an easy job but that's a suggestion coherent from the GNU
> position, I think.

"Making a deal" would be great.  I'd just like to see it be something that
actually makes sense.

> You may agree or not, you just have to accept that the way Savannah
> run.

Of course it's your ship, it's just kind of a strange situation not to
host a project that's licensed under the GNU GPL, due to an unfortunate
technicality.

> Finally, your problem is not specific with the Savannah position but
> with the GNU project position. You should write your concern to
> address@hidden instead.

Savannah is the host, so that's the first step.  I assumed you had a
certain amount of discretion.  Since you already disagree with my
position, does it matter if I talk to GNU?  Would even a signed, stamped
letter from RMS change your mind?

Anyway, I don't have a problem with the FSF's viewpoint, or I wouldn't
write free software.

I don't know what's going on right now, maybe the FSF is already talking
to NVidia and ATI.