*BSD News Article 18461


Return to BSD News archive

Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.apps
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!newsrelay.iastate.edu!news.iastate.edu!ponderous.cc.iastate.edu!michaelv
From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon)
Subject: Re: X-windows & Diamond VLB
Message-ID: <michaelv.742745330@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
Sender: news@news.iastate.edu (USENET News System)
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
References: <CA6rDw.54H@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> <CA6rrE.5pK@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 1993 14:08:50 GMT
Lines: 33

In <CA6rrE.5pK@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> ldv@anaconda.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Vaught) writes:

>I read through the FAQ for XFree86, and it claims that it won't
>support my card due to trade secrets and non disclosure.  They're
>afraid that Diamond Computer Systems will file legal action against
>them.

Diamond doesn't like you.  You run free software, so are evil.
Nevermind that you paid them good money for a card.  You cannot have a
graphics driver for their card without also paying for it.

You're quite welcome to write a driver for it, but to do that you have
to pay Diamond a lot of money to become one of their developers.  And
if you do this, you're not allowed to freely release the source code
of your driver.  Plus, they don't care enough about you to write a
driver themselves for 386bsd--it's not important enough to them.

This fascism is why your card is not supported.

>I'm beginning to lose hope.  I have a quality graphics card, and it
>seems to be all but unusable.  I'm open to any suggestions as to how
>I can get X up and running on my machine.

There are many quality graphics cards on the market.  If possible, you
might try taking this card back to where you bought it and buy one
from someone who cares a little more about their customer base, and a
little bit less about their bottom line.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael L. VanLoon                           Project Vincent Systems Staff
  michaelv@iastate.edu              Iowa State University Computation Center
------------------------------------------------------------------------------