"I will favor purchases from the first of ATI/AMD or nVidia to open source their graphics drivers but only if 1,000 other people or organisations will do the same."
— Marcus Hewat, paying customer
Deadline to sign up by: 31st December 2007
216 people signed up, 784 more were needed
More details
As a paying customer, I expect the graphics cards for PC that I buy to work out of the box with the open source and Free software that I use. This is currently not the case because the two major graphics card manufacturers are currently in a "stale mate" situation where they both keep their drivers proprietary at the customer's expense. To create an incentive for one of these manufacturers to open their drivers I make the following pledge:
When either "ATI/AMD" or nVidia open source the 3D drivers for their discrete graphics cards for PC, I will favor buying their products over their competitor in all circumstances over the next five years even if the other later open sources it's drivers.
Clarifications:
-this pledge does not affect buying decisions for products with open source 3D graphics drivers prior to the pledge (for example if Intel where to start producing discrete graphics cards)
-if both manufacturers open source their drivers within 31 days of each other, they are considered to be released simultaneously and this pledge does not apply.
-this pledge only affects buying decisions of discrete graphics cards, such as PCI-Express or AGP cards
-the new open source 3D drivers must at least equal the features and performance of the best (other) open source 3D drivers available at the time of their release (such as the r200, r300 and Intel drivers)
-the new open source drivers must support all discrete video cards of the manufacturer currently in production.
-the open source drivers must be in a license compatible with the "open source" or "Free software" definition and must be distributable with X.org in a GNU/Linux Distribution
-specifications of all the graphics cards currently in production, provided under NDA to any current X.org, Mesa3D or DRI developer who places a request is also acceptable, provided it contains sufficient information to allow developing and distributing Open/Free drivers that meet the other requierments