[Open-graphics] Getting more exposure for OGP

[Nick S-A]

> Lance and Theo have been having some discussions, and one of the
> suggestions that has come out of it is that we might benefit from
> coming more vocal and activist about our beliefs.
>
> What do you think we should do?  What can we do to get ourselves on
> the radar of more people on the FOSS community and in IT in general?

It is always a good idea to get more press and information around the  
world, but we might not want to come across as TOO much of an embrace- 
open-source sort of group. It might convince some corporations that  
we are not as stable or secure as other AMD or Nvidia options.

>
> One of Theo's suggestion is to use the "people are only interested in
> negative press" factor.  We could submit trade articles that point out
> the flaws in another graphics vendor and how we're a suitable
> alternative.  This would get us positive exposure (negative press for
> A is positive for ~A).  It would be a way to call people to
> participate on the project.  And it would draw attention to us in
> commercial circles, like embedded where we think we'll sell the most
> graphics chips and to people who want FPGA boards.

If we do decide to get vocal about this, we might have some other  
consequences. For example, if we are lucky, AMD might release ATI  
drivers open source (or have they already? I haven't been following  
this too closely), which could be good or bad. Good, because it means  
that a lot of linux users are a lot happier with it, which means more  
people, which means more OGP users for those who want to upgrade  
their cards. Bad because it means that many people would prefer to  
stay with a "name brand", e.g. ATI or Nvidia or other vendor, rather  
than use OGP, and open sourcing the ATI drivers would mean they would  
be a viable alternative (to OGP).

Is the commercial version going to be an FPGA or ASIC, or has that  
not been decided yet? I think that quite a few people (I for one)  
would be interested in a cheap, effective FPGA devel platform with  
PCI in the order of a couple hundred dollars.

Just a few ideas to throw out there!