Trade Secrets are EVIL was: Re: [Open-graphics] Getting more exposure for OGP

[Raphaël Jacquot]

Timothy Miller wrote:
> On 10/14/06, Lourens Veen <lourens at rainbowdesert.net> wrote:
>> On Friday 13 October 2006 16:46, Dieter wrote:
>> >
>> > > The fact is, any card that they might release full specs for would
>> > > be just as old-tech as OGA, if not worse.  They're not going to
>> > > give up their money-makers at the high end, so they'll start
>> > > selling $24 Radeon 7000 cards again.
>> >
>> > Sigh.  Even the founding father of an open hardware group thinks of
>> > releasing specs as giving up a money-maker.
>>
>> No, he thinks that nVidia and ATI make most of their money with the most
>> expensive and recent of their cards, rather than with the older
>> versions. It's the cards that are being described as money-makers, not
>> the specs.
> 
> Let me clarify:  ATI and nVidia see their newer high-end cards as
> money-makers.  Therefore, they will not give away the specs.
> 
> Lourens' statement is correct, but orthogonal to what I was saying.

what happens next is that they didn't need to write docs, because the 
driver was written internally. then when card n is superseeded by card 
n+1, it makes no economical sense to spend money on writing docs for it, 
because that's not what they are going to sell next.