[Savannah-hackers] Re: submission of Waves, Clouds, and Sand - savannah.nongnu.org

[planet10]

> My physical box have a partition will absolutely non-essential stuff
> that is non-free. It's not a problem for me.

The point being, it's not really "pure" or "untainted" from the larger
viewpoint of what's on the hard drive, or what you use.

Also, I'd guess that your estimate of only playing games 2% of the time is
quite a low estimate for most people (if you use the computer 8 hours a
day, playing games for 2 percent of that is less than 10 minutes).

For most people who play games, 2 or 3 hours a day is pretty common.

> Frankly, who care if I play sometimes to a non-free game. There's
> absolutely no consequences.

Unfortunately, that's not accurate.  You enlarge the audience for
proprietary software, which doesn't help advance the cause of free
software.  Your actions demonstrate that free software is not viable for a
large part of what many people like to do with computers -- play games
with nice graphics.

I would like to change that situation, as opposed to throwing up my hands
and installing Windows.

> There's is flaw in your speech, you are saying that :
>         1) people do not use free drivers to get nifty 3d rendering
>         2) the reason is because there not good free 3d games
>         3) you propose to make a good 3d game dependant on proprieraty drivers
>         4) and this would incitate ATI, NVidia et al. to free their
> drivers
>

You're missing 3a) Lots of people start playing GNU GPLed games,
understand the philosophy behind free software, and lobby for 3D vendors
to release free drivers.

> Why would they free their drivers if everybody is satisfied with them
> as non free?

Why would anyone use Debian if everyone is satisfied with Windows?


> If we accept such choice, we should accept for instance 3d filesystem
> browser dependant on non-free drivers et caetera.
> There will maybe more and more 3d software. If building them on
> non-free stuff becomes natural, what will be the result?

As more and more projects use 3D, the FSF/Savannah realize 3D should be a
priority and throw their weight into the ring; this also helps convince 3D
vendors to release free drivers/specifications.

Right now they exert pressure on developers to stay away from 3D; I would
like to see them instead help modern 3D hardware become usable on GNU
systems.

I think part of the problem here is that many GNU folks are too busy to
play games, so for them it's a niche and a minor concern.

> You we're saying that features lacks in free drivers but if you're are
> not willing to use existing features, you do not help me free drivers.

I'm not optimistic that reverse-engineered drivers, or part-time
partially-funded specs-only drivers are going to be able to take advantage
of new hardware.

I'm coming at this from a different direction; I think we need to get
hardware manufacturers on our side.  To do that I think we need more free
3D projects that use advanced features to expand the "free 3D" audience
and resulting sphere of influence.

> Why not directly using free reference implementation? Doesn't it
> exist?

I don't know of free reference test suites that use the latest hardware
features.  Of course, none of them could be developed on a free system
anyway.

Since most extensions are vendor-driven, they develop in-house,
get them working, and publish the technical reference.  The features then
go into their proprietary drivers...