"It has been one year to the day since XGI Technology had last released a Volari Linux display driver and about 14 months since we had first delivered word of XGI considering open-source 3D display drivers. Where do things now stand for XGI Technology? We will tell you all of the details today where things are for this Taiwan graphics company."
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2005-10-17
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XGI have submitted open source 3D drivers to X.org, as can be in the Freedesktop bugzilla. The fact that they're not shipped in a release yet is likely to be more related to the general issues associated with integrating large code drops from hardware vendors - ensuring that everything is properly licensed, integrates with the existing code well and so on. It certainly looks like XGI is showing willing.
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That's all non 3d stuff.
Maybe I'm misinterpretting this one....
"Non-3D programming guide"
Open the guides. They're from february. This is nothing new. Back in february is around the time when XGI released the 2D only source code.
As was stated in the article.
I want open sourced drivers just as much as anybody. But I'd like to see the proof first.
And your link goes to show that phoronix was right. Not the original poster's belief.
Edited 2007-01-02 19:32
Member since:2005-10-17
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https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9129 - released in November.
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2005-06-30
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We (SkyOS) tried working with XGI about two years ago. They wanted us to sign a bunch of NDA's and such to get access to their hardware specs, which we didn't feel like doing. They are a very small hardware company, we are a very small OS group, and we were hoping we could find some common ground quickly to help each other out, but that didn't materialize so, oh well.
Personally, I think they should just open everything up and go for broke. Their technology is years behind NVIDIA/AMD, and even Intel. The only risk they have is of more platforms supporting their hardware. I know for a fact that a lot of SkyOS users would have picked up a $40 video card from them if it meant they could get 3D hardware acceleration. Oh well. It is what it is. 
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Yeah, well, like a lot of things with SkyOS, we do our best to work something out, and if it doesn't happen, we just move along.
I was personally hoping they would open all of the necessary specs to us. This would have allowed Robert to create the underlying sub-system for hardware 3D support (both for composition on the desktop, as well as gaming for Quake 3 and such), and since NVIDIA and ATI had/have no interest in working with us at present, the XGI cards would have been the de-facto 3D hardware standard for SkyOS. However, their hardware is simply not that good, nor are the drivers for the hardware, and while we were willing to overlook this just to get some support in the system, it just wasn't worth it if we had to jump through a bunch of legal hoops to get there. For NVIDIA or ATI support, definitely, but not for XGI.
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2006-01-22
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2006-10-11
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It's a shame. I don't care about 3D on the desktop, but i would buy a graphics card with full open source drivers just because. Yes, OGP*, i'm looking at you.
* http://wiki.duskglow.com/tiki-index.php?page=Open-Graphics
Member since:
2007-01-03
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Forgive my naivety, but does this mean anything for sis owners? Since sis and xgi cards are supported by the same 2d driver, might this mean that 3d support is going to become available for the sis340 series if xgi ever decides to opensource the driver?
Edited 2007-01-03 18:26
