two words…
So with intel being a good FOSSy-player for some time now and AMD/ATI gearing up their FOSSy efforts considerably, the one questions that remains is: How will nVidia react? It would be great if they start actively helping the nouveau-project.
Maybe the secret dream we all have - having solid and fully FOSS 2D/3D drivers for all major GPUs - will come true afterall. These days that dream looks more likely than ever before.
P.S.: Oh, btw… ImgTec, would you also please make sure all your PowerVR MBX and SGX GPUs have proper FOSS drivers too? Thanks in advance! 
September 10th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
It certainly is excellent news. I’d also be interested to see what sort of innovation the free software world can bring to the table. I’m especially wondering if opening it up will mean that it becomes more accessible for non-graphics tasks. I know that people have done various computations on the GPU before, but I don’t think it has exactly gone mainstream. On the other hand, I’m pretty ignorant in this area, so maybe the thing holding it back is just that there are significant limitations that are nothing to do with open drivers
September 10th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
"P.S.: Oh, btw… ImgTec, would you also please make sure all your PowerVR MBX and SGX GPUs have proper FOSS drivers too? Thanks in advance!"
You are a cheeky fucker!
September 10th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
@ Andy: You are speaking of GPGPU (generall processing tasks executed on GPUs), I assume. The best resource for a neutral view on the current state of things here is probably the site http://www.gpgpu.org.
I don’t think a wide adoption of GPGPU in the OpenSource field is connected to graphics-drivers being OpenSource. It’s rather the supported feature-set (OpenGL-extensions) of a GPU/driver combination that needs to be solid, in order to make GPGPU possible on free desktop-systems. If the driver in question is OpenSource, that is even better then!
In addition to that, I think that GPGPU is usually only interesting for traditional number-crunching users, like universities, research institutions, movie-sfx studios & co. The average user of a desktop-system isn’t likely to scream for a solid GPGPU out-of-the-box experience any time soon. Although, I personally, would like that to be the case
@ Karl: I’m a bastard, I know
September 10th, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Get paid to work on eye candy:
http://www.netsplit.com/blog/articles/2007/09/10/ubuntu-desktop-developer
Your @bangang.de email bounces.
jeff@omniscience:~$ host -t MX bangang.de
bangang.de has no MX record
September 10th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
What about Matrox cards
They have tippy-toed with the g550, but it still has binary blobs, and is only a single card.
September 12th, 2007 at 7:52 am
wooohoooo!!! free graphics for the masses!