ATI Drivers Going Open Source?

[The Continental]

InfoWorld (http://www.infoworld.com) columnist Tom Yager takes a look (http://www.infoworld.com/article/06/08/02/32OPcurve_1.html) at what exactly the AMD/ATI merger is going to mean for both companies, from ATI's integrated graphics chipsets to AMD's relationship with Nvidia. Included in the editorial is this bit of speculation:
Lastly, and remember you heard it here, AMD is strongly considering open-sourcing at least a functional subset of ATI’s graphics drivers. It’s time for X Window System, OpenGL, and client virtualization for which ATI binary drivers aren’t available to escape the ghetto of the 1980s-era framebuffer. And what a boon for PR. If AMD’s graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two.Having had positive experiences with the ATI Omega Drivers (http://www.omegadrivers.net/), I'm certainly in favor of allowing the community to have a look around under the hood of ATI's drivers.

[Klade]

I'm all for open source ATI drivers. Right now getting most ATI cards to work in linux is a chore, especially compared to the extreme ease that is a nvidia install. Open source drivers would mean a much easier time of it.

[bapenguin]

That would be a very smart move on AMD's part.

[TrackZero]

Definitely a great idea on ATi's part. They should embrace that shit.

[Ramiro]

Looks like Intel is doing the same (http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2006-August/017404.html).

[Slack3r78]

Having had positive experiences with the ATI Omega Drivers, I'm certainly in favor of allowing the community to have a look around under the hood of ATI's drivers.
If that's your main reasoning for thinking this is good, you've never tried to use ATI's Linux drivers. They suck. No, they completely fucking blow. No, understatement again. They are a blackhole-powered vacuum of man meat suckitude. And that may still be understating the situation.

Looks like Intel is doing the same.
Intel's drivers have been open sourced for at least the last couple of years. The difference is, nobody really cares about Intel's graphics adapters because they're damn near worthless for anything beyond simple accelerated 2D rendering. Getting something as run of the mill as widescreen support working properly under X windows on my notebook was a nightmare because of the braindead manner in which Intel GMA handles things as simple as screen resolution. Keep in mind that that is with open source drivers available.

Open source ATI drivers are good because the GPUs themselves are fairly decent, but they're hampered by completely worthless driver support.

[Slack3r78]

Double posting is lame, but I prefer not to play historical revisionist when I've made some stupid mistake.

Apparently the news with Intel is they've opened up their GMA965 drivers, which is their newest release. They had previously open sourced drivers for the rest of the Centrino platform, so I was expecting i815/i915 to be covered in that, and I'm having a hard time confirming either way on that part.

Either way, I think the point still stands, ATI open source drivers would be far, far bigger news.

[roboninja]

This is probably going to happen, I'm usually pretty psychic when it comes to predictions based on the open sourcing of video drivers.
Got to say, not the best psychic power to have :D

[51|RandoM]

They'll have to pull out all of their graphic cheats <cough> I mean optimizations first.