From what? People actually using and improving their drivers?
>to protect their IP
What's the fucking point? What is there to protect? It's what I don't understand in the first place.
>and to save time and resources.
I call bullshit. Opening their drivers would save more time and resources than they could ever hope to save by keeping it closed.
>Good documentation takes effort.
It takes much more effort to reverse engineer stuff. If you can't be assed to write documentation, give us undocumented code (side note: why are you writing undocumented code in the first place?). It's still infinitely better than keeping them closed. Everything is better than keeping them closed.
>Plus, have you seen the pattern that played out with the open source drivers for ATI cards? "Oh, if only those ATI bastards would release documentation!" (ATI releases documentation) "Oh, if only those ATI bastards would release example code!" (ATI releases example code) (etc)
One bad example doesn't prove or disprove anything. As a counterexample, look at the excellent Intel Graphics drivers for GNU/Linux - by far the most reliable graphic drivers I have used; nVidia doesn't even come close, and let's not get started about AMD/ATI. Free and open drivers are still infinitely superior to keeping them closed.
>This went on. By that point, it doesn't seem like a loss to not bother.
How is open sourcing something a bother? It's much more of a bother to keep them closed, for everyone involved, users and developers alike.
>unless you're suggesting they could fire the driver team and have the open source community do their work for them.
I am suggesting that the driver team should not, by any means, be the only ones with access to the source code and the right to fork, modify, fix and improve it. It's stupid and inflexible, and that's something the hard- and software industries have to learn already.
From what? People actually using and improving their drivers?
>to protect their IP
What's the fucking point? What is there to protect? It's what I don't understand in the first place.
>and to save time and resources.
I call bullshit. Opening their drivers would save more time and resources than they could ever hope to save by keeping it closed.
>Good documentation takes effort.
It takes much more effort to reverse engineer stuff. If you can't be assed to write documentation, give us undocumented code (side note: why are you writing undocumented code in the first place?). It's still infinitely better than keeping them closed. Everything is better than keeping them closed.
>Plus, have you seen the pattern that played out with the open source drivers for ATI cards? "Oh, if only those ATI bastards would release documentation!" (ATI releases documentation) "Oh, if only those ATI bastards would release example code!" (ATI releases example code) (etc)
One bad example doesn't prove or disprove anything. As a counterexample, look at the excellent Intel Graphics drivers for GNU/Linux - by far the most reliable graphic drivers I have used; nVidia doesn't even come close, and let's not get started about AMD/ATI. Free and open drivers are still infinitely superior to keeping them closed.
>This went on. By that point, it doesn't seem like a loss to not bother.
How is open sourcing something a bother? It's much more of a bother to keep them closed, for everyone involved, users and developers alike.
>unless you're suggesting they could fire the driver team and have the open source community do their work for them.
I am suggesting that the driver team should not, by any means, be the only ones with access to the source code and the right to fork, modify, fix and improve it. It's stupid and inflexible, and that's something the hard- and software industries have to learn already.