Over the years many have brought up the idea of crowd funding open source graphics driver development in order to speed up development and finally close the gap on the Windows drivers. A few days ago I setup a small scale experiment to see if it could actually work. Rather than go all out trying to raise a huge sum of money I have setup a small project on Indiegogo as a type of proof of concept to see whether a larger project would really be viable. To make things a bit more interesting if I reach my stretch goal I will dedicate some of the time towards creating some documentation on Mesa based on my understanding of it throughout development. This would hopefully be useful to others considering contributing but with no idea where to start.
Basically my idea involves implementing the GL_KHR_DEBUG extension in Mesa which is required for the open source Linux drivers to eventually advertise support for OpenGL 4.3.
To see more information on what the project is all about please follow the link below to my Indiegogo campaign. Thanks for your time, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have.
http://igg.me/p/475220/x/2053460 Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Basically my idea involves implementing the GL_KHR_DEBUG extension in Mesa which is required for the open source Linux drivers to eventually advertise support for OpenGL 4.3.
To see more information on what the project is all about please follow the link below to my Indiegogo campaign. Thanks for your time, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have.
http://igg.me/p/475220/x/2053460 Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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For instance, you say it's only for open source graphics drivers, but is it for all of them? Gallium3D for instance (which I also don't know that much of) is not used in Intel's drivers by default.
Additionally, why do proprietary graphics drivers not use Mesa? Is it due to the restrictions of the GNU GPL?
Thanks in advance.
So how will this benefit me? Will it help my games run faster/better?
The benefits to most Linux users will not be direct benefits, for example the GL_KHR_DEBUG extension will not magically help games run faster or better. The benefits to end users will be more indirect, these benefits include:
Yes this is only for the open source drivers. For my campaign page:
"Which drivers will the extension be implemented in?
This extension will implemented in Mesa core so will be available on all drivers."
So yes it will be available for all open source drivers.
The proprietary drivers do not use Mesa probably mainly due to historically reasons such as never being up to date with the latest OpenGL version/ the old world view that closed source is better. Hopefully this is something we can help change. Mesa is MIT licensed so GPL restriction do not apply.
I hope all this helps clear things up.
Done.
It has nothing to do with licensing, you can run propietary games linked to GPL software, I do it all the time. Manufacturers have their own implementations optimized for their hardware, they don't just compete in the hardware, also in the software.