[Open-graphics] Getting more exposure for OGP

[Lance Hanlen]

On 10/12/06, Terry Hancock <hancock at anansispaceworks.com> wrote:
> Patrick McNamara wrote:
> >  We have identified that their is a problem with the closed nature of
> >  current hardware and have begun taking steps to fix that. While our
> >  focus is actually on creating the video card, perhaps as important is
> >  the creation of the OGD1 board.
>
> Side note: as fodder for marketing spin, it is precisely this kind of
> "unintended" reuse advantage that free-licensed design most enables.
> Projects can spin-off in completely different directions simply because
> this design exists.
>
> >  I have found it quite interesting to read the opinions this topic has
> >  generated. From the philosophy/advocacy side of things we have the
> >  argument that the identification of the problem and action on that
> >  problem is the newsworthy item and is the important achievement. The
> >  creation of the physical thing is a side effect.
>
> Yes and no.  Even from a philosophical/ideological standpoint, an idea
> that bears no fruit is, well, fruitless.  ;-)
>

I don't know if I would take it that far. I've lost some of my best
developers to remote mountain ranges and monasteries. I wish there was
a way to justify every idea with a material advantage, but alas, some
ideas simply stand on their own.

> Even the GNU project was not a "success" until it started producing
> utility programs that could actually be used. In addition to be a
> pragmatic success, these developments established the
> *proof-of-principle* that free-licensed software development can be
> done.  Linux was a much more impressive proof, because it was precisely
> the kind of project that many people believed could not be done.
>

GNU's utilities were for the most part OSless (sorry). I would argue
their radical ideas made them what they were. People were willing to
suffer the utilities to be a part of the event. I know I was. That
goes double for the early days of Linux (not so much for Red Hat
Enterprise Linux I'm sorry to say :)

> With hardware, the credibility battle is much harder.  The number of
> people who believe it can work is still small.  Somewhere, I have an
> article by Richard Stallman himself, written in about 1999, in which he
> essentially claims that free-licensed hardware can't work.  It's clear
> from reading the article that at that time, he had not yet become
> conscious of the distinction between free-licensing the *design* for a
> piece of hardware (which is of course, software)  and free-licensing the
> actual hardware (about which, of course, he was correct -- nobody is
> talking about giving away the *hardware* for free).
>

There was a time that held true for software. Making the impossible
possible is technology's job. We're about to cross that very Rubicon
for hardware, and it's a very exciting time to be doing this.

> Nevertheless, the misconception evident in his 1999 article is still
> prevalent in many other people's minds: the idea that free software only
> works because it is a "pure information product".  I even made this
> mistake to some degree in the early part of my "Free Matter Economy"
> series (I'm annoyed with myself for choosing that name, in fact, because
> it suggests "an economy of free matter", when what I intended was  "a
> free economy of matter" or even "a matter economy enabled by
> free-licensed design").  So, I think many people have some proving to do.
>
> Strictly speaking, it's not the production of the OGD1 card that matters
> so much as proving that you *can* produce a piece of hardware from the
> OGP project (and actually producing OGD1 is the most effective way to do
> that).  After that, there's basically very little credibility gap in
> producing OGA1, and we'll see a lot more support and belief in the project.
>
> As for OGP and OHF, I think you should realize that you are competing
> for mindshare with older projects like Open Cores (of course, you want
> to cooperate more than compete, but AFAIK, there hasn't been much
> communication at all -- is that true?).  For example, I recently read an
> article which described Open Cores as the 'the GNU project of free
> hardware'.
>
> OTOH, what Open Cores does has little impact on end users, whereas an
> OGP graphics card has the potential to put an open hardware product in
> people's hands, and give them real benefits -- just like the GNU
> utilities did in the late 1980s.
>

Open Cores is still the software model applied to hardware. What is
key here is that the industry and the technology are at a point where
the fundamental definition of hardware design will enable a true open
source hardware that has never been possible before.

This is a wholly new phenomenon. Technical considerations are not
enough. To carry this off, we need political capitol. We are asking
civilization to accept a fundamental change. Even though it has just
now become technically possible, we need the trust and the support of
a lot of different institutions in order to be granted the privilege
of being the ones to make it happen.

> Cheers,
> Terry
>
>
> --
> Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
> Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
>
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-- 
_Lance