http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d Comments on 'favor purchases from the first of ATI/AMD or nVidia to open source their graphics drivers' en-gb team@pledgebank.com hourly 2 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_2349975 1000 people are lots, and really lots. I would be happy if only a few, let's say 5 people would favor a buy of hardware because of open source drivers, but watching at least 200 people signing I'm impressed. Anyway I was about to buy a ATI/AMD x1050 AGP port, but it got sold out, and only the more expensive Xyyy models are available. I guess AGP is out of business. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_2290398 Recently (start of 2008), AMD/ATI has been regularly releasing 2D and 3D specifications for its graphics cards. nVidia has not. For this reason, I recommend favoring ATI/AMD and Intel in your graphics card purchases. I also recommend avoiding nVidia graphics cards. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1641375 I'm absolutely going to buy the one that has open source drivers! I'm pretty sure when they do so the quality of the driver will increase. Or, at least, the community will come up with dozens of cool hacks ;-) http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1640620 Looks like AMD is about to release an open sourced driver for R500 and above cards. They will also be releasing specifications and have pledged to work with the FOSS community on the open source drivers. see http://www.linux.com/feature/119049 http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1601661 Dear Dan Warren, I believe this pledge does give Intel just as good a deal as "the big boys". The pledge specifically says: “this pledge does not affect buying decisions for products with open source 3D graphics drivers prior to the pledge” This means that someone who takes the pledge can still freely buy an Intel graphics card with Open Source drivers whatever ATI or nVidia do. The goal of this pledge is to financially motivate manufacturers who have not yet Open Sourced their drivers and not penalize the ones who already have (Intel only as of today). I have worded this pledge as carefully as possible and I think it works as intended. I hope you will understand that it is impossible to edit the text of a pledge that has already been signed. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1595441 I don't care for the intel exception. If intel manages to put out a card which is comparable to a new mid-range nvidia or ati card I think they should get just as good a deal as the big boys. I say this because intel is already playing nice, and are likely to do so in the future. If we give them a reason to jump into the fray I think they deserve the break. I would suggest rewording to something along the lines of a full OpenGL pipeline (current intel chips use a lot of emulation of the graphics pipeline in software) I think the nvidia/ati open driver cold war can go on forever, we need some small party contenders to come in and shake up the balance of power. I say offer this pledge to all comers who produce a modern midrange full hardware OpenGL pipeline add on card with free (GPL or BSD) drivers. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1438316 Be open, what are you afraid of? http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1162690 I have already followed this philosophy in purchasing 2 Matrox G400 cards and an ATI R200-based card. Friends also ask me for recommendations, and two extra factors are source availability (pragmatically for stability, as opposed to "merely philosophy") and community/marketplace position and participation. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1152515 I would really have done this anyway, although I still hold a grudge with Nvidia for their bait-and-switch over free drivers in the early 2000s. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1104458 I doubt this will happen, though AMD have announced that they will open source they're drivers. Either way it won't hurt to pledge. Currently I'm looking out for some nice Intel cards - purely because they are OSS and work so well. http://www.pledgebank.com/open3d#comment_1104336 FORZA!