[Panel-devel] ATi- Plasma- support

[Matt Rogers]

On Wednesday 17 August 2005 21:49, danalien wrote:
> On Thursday 18 August 2005 04.01, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On Wednesday 17 August 2005 06:31, danalien wrote:
> > > On Thursday 18 August 2005 02.11, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > > > On Wednesday 17 August 2005 03:40, danalien wrote:
> > >
> > > here's a thing you could throw at them (to stirr some 'fire' in the
> > > conversation).
> > >
> > > if ATI guy goes : No we won't fully F/OSS the drivers...
> >
> > would i like to see open source drivers? you bet! bu ti would expect that
> > ATi and nVidia's response to your approach would simply be "oh. ok. well,
> > that's unfortunate. bye!" and then our users would still be stuck with
> > closed source drivers AND not have the best experience possible with
> > plasma. lose, lose.
>
> Nope you've got it all backwards! :-)
>
> Yes, what you said, can be true, they could do just that. But then it'll be
> up to us to go and show them what amazing things we can do with XGI's and
> VIA's products!
>

why? why should we even care? Why should we even be worrying about catering 
our code to one specific chipset or vendor?

> So if it's anybody that will loose, in the end, it will be them.  Be
> confident of that! - even if they'd try to pull that "card" you've just
> said.
>

no, it will be our users.

> See it this way, if we can make Plasma 'sing' on XGI & VIA ... we'll "have
> them by the ballz", so to speak =D ... as they'll be threaded of the
> competition, it the sense that here's XGI/VIA that offer products with less
> blazzing-speed, but still manages to 'sing' someting as amazing as Plasma
> ... and comes at an affordable prize ... and I can garantee you that
> somewhere down the line they hear of themselfs again, when they'll feel
> that their "profit margins" will/would be at the stake!     (exact time is
> hard to predict, but somewhere down the road, they'll definitely be back -
> IF we'll make Plasma 'Sing' on XGI/VIA)
>

I think you're missing the point. This is not a cutthroat, grab 'em by the 
balls, make it hurt for them business. Hell, it's not even a business!

> If not, then you can have my notebook (an Acer 1300xv) ) - yeah, I'll
> gladly "put my money where my mouth is" :-)
>
>

you're going to pay for shipping right? Would you like my address so you can 
ship me your notebook now? :)

> As I've said to 'Wade Olson' - this is "the business tango".
>
> > i'd like to actually have a relationship with these people so that maybe
> > our users can have better graphics support on the desktop. and that's
> > really the full extent of my agenda. i think that should be the full
> > extent of the plasma agenda as well.
>
> I know what you mean, and my intentions are exatly the same .... but it
> seems that developers don't really know "the business tango" all to well,
> and they behave like n3wbi3 music artist that will sign over their rights
> to the 1st person commin' knocking on the door - from the excitemet.
>

Then why do I feel that your intentions are not the same? So far, the only 
thing we've seen out of this is that ATI has mentioned wanting to work with 
the Plasma developers. They didn't say how, they didn't say why, and we don't 
even know what it involves at this point in time. I think you're jumping to 
conclusions.

> And that's exactly not how real business men do business!
>
> Their calm, rational, know what they want, and know how to "tango" when
> it's needed. :)
>
>
> cheers.
>
>
> PS. I got a degree in Business, so I feel more then confident in what I've
> said. [if you'd like proof I can bring it with me to aKademy :)]

Except what you describe is not the way open source works in general. You 
can't just graft traditional business techniques on to open source. If that 
actually happened, we wouldn't be getting emails from ATI, because they 
wouldn't care about open source because it wouldn't help their bottom line.

I would suggest that you need to re-examine the situation here. I agree that 
your original question about finding out what 'want to work with the plasma 
team' entail is a good question. However, since you don't have all the 
information, you're not qualified (just like i'm not qualified) to rush out 
and apply a bunch of "business 101" to the situation.
-- 
Matt