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Games Entertainment

3DFX Attacks on Glide Wrapper Authors Rage On 164

Posted by CmdrTaco from the no-we-will-NOT-release-our-specs dept.
An anonymous reader writes "3dfx has emailed several Glide wrapper authors claiming that the wrappers were developed using the Glide SDK and is an infringement on their intellectual property. 3dfx even contacted the server admins of some webservers to have the sites with the wrappers taken down. " Mirror quickly.
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3DFX Attacks on Glide Wrapper Authors Rage On More

3DFX Attacks on Glide Wrapper Authors Rage On

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  • Is this what happened to Dave's classics? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Dave screwed up and posted a Sony BIOS (Playstation?). They had right on their side (this time), but they could have been nicer about it. The big game companies are taking every chance they get to make examples of people. They have been acting like RIAA jerks of late.

    TK
  • A quick look at Glide Underground didn't show this link which I found very interesting. Tale of 3DFX, Tale of Woe [angelic-coders.com]

    I wish those hackers spent their time on projects with a better chance of survival. It's their time to waste, but I hope they've learned something.

  • This is getting old (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hmm...

    ...but employees can be held legally liable for their actions as individuals... (read: corporate officers sacked/jailed for financial crimes).

    People are legally punished by association all the time, even if it's not official.

    If you feel like you're persecuted by your local law enforcement agents, you probably would agree with this 100%...

    Corporations should have far fewer rights as individual human beings. It is still not clear to me whether in the US they should even fall under the Constitution, and the protections it has. At least in some areas of the Constitution, corporations do have more limited rights than individuals (i.e., corporate vs. individual free speech).

    The problem is that most people will embed the coporate/individual duality into themselves completely. Take the corporate president/CEO who takes it personally that the corporation is getting negative press, etc., which is a totally different view than most of his worker peons to whom the corporation merely pays their paycheck.

    And, of course, this duality is totally used by the people for their own maximal benefit. Company does wrong? Can't sue me, can only sue the corporation (even though you told the company to do the bad things). Even shareholders can only do so much, and that is only on things related to the value of the stock.

    The group of nuns trying to force Occidental Oil Corporation to change a development plan in Columbia by a proxy action are facing some roadblocks legally as well...

  • Why use Glide? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If you're only targetting 3dfx hardware (which made sense 2 years ago, belive it or not), then Glide is the best way to go. Depressingly, there are still games that ship with only Glide support (Starsiege Tribes, Unreal, anyone?), and these represent Big Wins for 3dfx in a buisness sense.

    If someone were to take this advantage away from them, well, they wouldn't like it.

    Glide as an API isn't terribly special. It's very lightweight, because it can make assumptions about the underlying hardware that something Real like OpenGL or D3D doesn't have the freedom to do.

    In this day and age, though, Glide an option for the stupid and lazy. There is too much mind and marketshare in other chipsets for it to be a wise decision any more, so 3DFX is, like corprations generally do when they sense they are loosing control, legally panicing.

  • Old Methods against companies (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why not boycott 3Dfx? Honestly.. there are a great many readers of /. from what I have seen we tend to be very annoyed by this sort of thing. Are we annoyed enough to boycott this company? If so it could have a pretty serious effect on thier bottom line, and THAT is what they will *feel*.

    Think about it.. Quake III is comming out any day now.. Time to upgrade for some. It would be very funny to see all other 3d card makers' sales jump BUT 3Dfx.
  • There are specs for 3D rendering in there. Not full specs, but enough to get decent 3D, I think.
    What is missing is specs for the WARP Engine, which is some sort of processor for doing geometry setup and stuff. Or that's what it sounds like.
  • Early on some of the authors noted that at least one of the SDK downloads didn't come with the legal docs, essentially not binding them to any sort of legal red tape.

    I have heard it said before that if software comes with no explicit license then the legal default is that the user has no rights to use the software.

    In reality, missing license files usually mean the software's author doesn't care what happens to the code, but reality and legality are often quite divorced.

    -Brett.

  • Posted by hOdGy:

    I find 3dfx making attacks on PC glide wrappers inadequate, and if they do such a thing, they should also be cancelling PC emulators for the Mac. They are infringing by emulating the Voodoo chipset for the emulator...
    Just a thought.
  • Posted by djfisty:

    a hardware company can make all of the proprietary and substandard products they want, but if the software companies don't go along with it, the products will fail. 3dfx isn't forcing Glide down anyone's throat; no one *has* to use it to get 3dfx graphics on their computers. the fact, then, that some games rely on Glide does not make 3dfx evil. indeed, the game companies have the free will to completely ignore 3dfx altogether. simply because they have not done so, 3dfx is not guilty of any great crime against humanity. it stands to reason, then, that the game companies are at fault for the implementation of such bad design.

    DJ
  • Posted by Scott Francis[Mechaman]:

    He didn't "screw up", he's had the assorted BIOSs for a long time, including the Neo Geo one. However, Sony apparently decided to get pissy all of a sudden and shut him down for it. Which is strange, as the only emulator needing the PSX BIOS is PSEmuPro which is far from being a replacement for a PSX. The Bleem team might have looked at a decompilation of the BIOS, but Bleem(which is more of a "threat" than PSEmuPro) doesn't use any part of the BIOS.
  • Another G200 driver project can be found at:

    http://lists.on.openprojects.net/mailman/listinf o/g200-dev

  • Government of the people, by the corporations, for the corporations.

    Probably at least some of these wrappers were legally developed, but thanks to the hard, innovative work of 3dfx, they have been rewarded with enough money to bypass any law they feel like by throwing lawyers at someone!

    Ain't capitalism great? Makes me proud to live here...

    </sasrcasm>

    Daniel
  • Matrox recently released 3D specs for the G200; I assume G400 specs will be released as well.

    Well, I have downloaded the G200 graphics specs, not looked at them, but other people that checked them found no 3D chip level programming information, and calls to Matrox only gave a run-around. If you can submit a link showing their intention to do this, please do, otherwise, please don't propagate 'grapevine' misinformation (like I have done too).

  • Sorry, problem with this is that currently none of the PC emulators have native support for any hardware on your PCI bus OTHER than a Voodoo card... this means that even though your Mac has a RAGE 128 chipset VirtualPC isn't writing to it directly, but rather to VirtualPCs emulated video card, which in turn writes to the MacOSs video subsystem... if you tried to run the GLIDE wrappers under VirtualPC I wouldnt be suprised if they worked (VPC is quite a stable bugger), but they sure as hell won't be any faster than VirtualPC already is, and I image really quite a bit slower. Both Connectix and Insignia, plus the new BlueLabel Power Emulator, all plan more native hardware support in their emus, a la the 3dfx support implemented in recent months/year... BLPE seems to have the head start with its totally modular design, basically allowing (or soon, when the sdk is out) coders to develop x86 drivers for hardware in your Mac, meaning unloading a HUGE load off the emulator (and therefore your CPU) and bringing emulated x86 ever closer to realtime...
  • NVIDIA has been very quiet about Linux, but I have information about their support (and recent good news from the riva-liberty mailing list).

    NVIDIA now has 3 people working on the Linux drivers (GLX/Mesa for XFree86 4.0). There is the original Linux developer, a new guy (their "best driver guy") that used to be working on the Microsoft drivers, and another part-time engineer. All Riva chips will have 3D support. No word yet on if it will be open source.

    Does anyone know when XF86 4.0 should be out? The XFree86 group seems to not like giving ETA's. I don't care if the date turns out to be wrong, it'd be nice to know when it might be out. :)

    Another interesting piece of info from riva-liberty is that NVIDIA is moving all of their code control over to PerForce and Linux.

    I've also been told to check their website from time to time for any other info.

    As for me, I'm getting a TNT2, not just because Linux support is on the horizon, but because it seems to be the better card anyway.
  • 1. NVIDIA now has 3 people working on GLX/Mesa for XFree86 4.0. That doesn't sound like "bugger off" to me. (Anyone know when XF86 4.0 is predicted to be out?) I've been told that all Riva chips will be 3D accelerated at that time.

    2. Not lying. All of the information I've read says boards will be clocked at many different speeds, and that there will be 175/200 boards.
  • The situation's not changed yet- but this is not because Id's chosen this situation. It's because of the following fact: There is no other card that currently supports acceleration of Mesa. That's right, if you want 3D acceleration today, you need Voodoo, Banshee, or Voodoo2. Thankfully, this is changing- we've got specs for Matrox' Millenium and G200, and we've got specs for SiS' AGP offering. What's heartening is that we've got the community working on the problem- and shortly, 3DfX will not be the only player in the field. Don't be surprised if Matrox' sales jump through the roof this year.
  • But there's several groups working at rectifying that omission...

    My advice... Get the G200 card now- it's supported under X already and the 3D support's coming soon.
  • The chipset specs are out for the G200 and the SiS AGP chipset (It doesn't perform anywhere near as good as the G200, but it's a lot cheaper than the G200 ($30-40US) and many of the cards based on the SiS chipset are opting for the hardware MPEG2 accel option- it's concieveable to see DVD under Linux possibly happening with this adapter...).

    If Matrox and SiS isn't supported for 3D acceleration under XFree86 4.0, you can expect a large crowd working on seeing to it that the omission of the same is quickly rectified.
  • Scherer recently said to me "3Dfx should wake up and leave the wrapper guys alone. Nothing benafits 3Dfx more than having everybody running Glide games on slow, crufty wrappers for other boards. That way, 3Dfx's boards always appear way faster"

    Makes sense to me.

    ...

    I don't really think anyone will read this. Sometime I'll do an article on /. about it maybe....

    WARNING: blatant plug coming.

    Go check out our new linux demo w/sound and stuff.

    singularity-software.com.

  • from someone who's been dealing with 3D card manufacturers on a professional basis for some time now.

    As I mentioned above, I've played with basically everything that's out now. I even hope to have a TNT2 and a G400 fairly soon (matter of weeks).

    I'd like to dispel some of the myths/FUD (yes, I dare say it) that's been going around.

    1. Yes, it's silly for card manufacturers to protect their hardware to the paranoid extent they do
    People end up reverse engineering it anyhow. Granted, 3D cards are pretty complicated beasts to reverse engineer, AFAIK no one's actually done it. But it does come under Fair Use, it's perfectly legal (I'm not a lawyer :). They should just release it and get over it.

    2. I don't wanna here any more of this nonsense about 3Dfx not being 32 bit
    They have some crazy filtering in the rendering pipeline that makes what the Voodoo2 actually displays quite different from what you see in the framebuffer from your code. We never figured it out. We asked 3Dfx how it works. I don't know that they'll ever tell us :). But it's a fair tradeoff for fill rate: image quality on the Voodoo2/3 is very good, esp. w/multitexture (I can personally guarantee from experience on my personal computer right here in front of me that the Voodoo2 looks as good or better than the TNT).

    3. Glide belongs to 3Dfx. The wrappers break the law. 3Dfx is perfectly within their rights
    That's just the way it is. If a game is written for Glide alone, it's 'cos the developers intended it to be that way.

    4. The only reason game developers fail to support other API's is...well...there are some good reasons
    It's easy to call programmers lazy. And we support both Glide and D3D, so maybe the guys who only do Glide are lazy. But
    - Glide is way easier to write than D3D. Trust me, I just got back from a several hours of dealing w/DX6. Yuck.
    - Glide is faster anyhow (and was especially faster than DX5).
    - 3Dfx does a very convincing job of buying programmers' souls with toys and love. What can I say, they're cool guys. They've always taken care of us.
  • The Free Software Foundation is incorporated as a non-profit. You may not like RMS personally, but he knows what he's doing.

    All you need to do to receive the protection afforded a corporation is work out an assignment of copyright with RMS. Assuming your work is clean, which some GLIDE wrappers appear not to be, I'm sure he could work something out.
  • Ok, here is the second link [opengl.org] again, this time done right.

    And yes, I am too lazy to cut-n-paste! So it is appreciated (if done right ;-)

  • ... for all the good it'll do. Still, I won't be
    buying 3Dfx or recommending it to friends, family,
    etc. Besides, IIRC I want 32MB/DVD/S-video on my
    card, and I won't be in the market for a vid
    upgrade for some time yet (next target is the C1x)

  • I got what you want....I got what you need!

    This is what you're advocating.

    We're better off developing something on our own.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • Here's the 10 cent explanation of what a wrapper is.

    Wrapper:A small program that intercepts API calls from a program (like the Glide API calls for Quake2) and executes an equivallent function in another API (like D3D or OpenGL).

    Kinda acts like a translator in a discussion where neither of the involved parties speaks the other's language.


    Chas - The one, the only.
    THANK GOD!!!

  • This way anyone can document what they are beginning. Still, the burden of proof is upon the developer, yet this could a clearinghouse of information as well as a piece of evidence.

  • Will they ever learn? Who intents to earn money by fiddling with the glide interface? It will lead to more programs use the Voodoo cards. Trying to sue the developers is just braindead, IMHO.

  • 3dfx have released their 3d specs to SOMEBODY and have done so for more than a year. So in this sense, they have offered more 3d support than anyone else ( no-one else has offered any )

    So go ahead and complain about the lack of support from 3dfx , but don't forget to complain about ALL of the other guys.

    Oh, btw, they didn't JUST release the 2d spec for the Banshee. THey released the glide source code and the vodoo / voodoo2 drivers. Which is a tad more than any other 3d card maker has done ...

  • I If you are willing to accept that kind of second rate treatment because it's the best that has been offered to you, f you are willing to accept that kind of second rate treatment because it's the best that has been offered to you,

    On the contrary, I just purchased a PC with linux pre installed, because I insist on good treatment. I agree that we should demand support from hardware companies, and moreover they should write the drivers for us. Just releasing the specs isn't good enough.

    The others are just as bad if not worse. But that doesen't mean 3dfx is good for our community.

    I wasn't endorsing them. Just pointing out that it's unfair to single them out for criticism. Oh, btw, my new machine has a TNT ;-)

  • There is no way that the V2 produces images that look as good as the TNT or my G200.

    When it comes to multitexturing the multipass rendering suffers on the v2 because the blending is done AT 16 bit (go read their docs). This means that when layering images (to achieve certain textures and transparencies) the V2 falls way short in visual quality.
  • But doesn't QuakeIII use OpenGL? Are there OpenGL drivers under Linux for other cards than 3Dfx? I sure hope so, as I would really like to put a Matrox in the new box I'm building...
  • i agree. and i disagree. if they do market studies, they may not REALIZE why people are ditching their products because the as word travels, the story can change many times over... i still think that well constructed criticism of their policies is in order just to send the message as clearly as possible... Peter
  • Many Americans become lawyers just because they still don't know what to do with themselves when they graduate from college. "Hmm, I have this BA, which overcomes the main barrier to employment, but I still have no practical skills, and I sure don't want to be a high school teacher or an academic. I don't want to be a secretary or work in advertising, either. Medical school is too hard, and I'm not old enough for business school. Hmm, maybe I'll just try to get into law school and put off the decision for two more years."
  • You're right, 3dfx doesnt give a rat's ass about linux, all they did is nod their heads yes when the open source thing came around for the xserver, before that the big D was working under NDA's. Lets get real, 3dfx could have had all thier product line (including V3 and banshee) wholly operating in glide and X in linux -last year-, they have the manpower and the money, but they just dont give a crap. I dont see other companies offering this level of cooperation either, and I'm getting tired of rebooting to Window95 (singular, not plural) just to play games, since I too own a banshee.
  • Trust me- you don't want to be on the other side of the matrix- it takes a lot of disturbing stuff for it to even be visible in this world, man. Did anybody get a chance to mirror the stuff?
  • Allowing criminal prosecution for a corporation becomes dangerous, because then "innocent" employees and their familes are affected by the actions of others. We can't legally punish someone simply by association. But I agree w/ the corporate bill of rights. corporations shouldn't have all the rights plus some that a flesh and blood citizen has. But, perhaps we can use this to our advantage. The other idea I had was that time spent programming, donating the work to "OpenSource, Inc." could be considered charity and therefore tax deductable..

    Good thoughts,
    Matt
  • Well, the proposed corporation could have control over the signing of NDA's and whatnot. if someone wants to develop something under NDA, great, fine, go ahead. but not under OpenSource, Inc. basically it would be a minimalist approach. a corporation that has no capital, no income, no expenditures, but exists to bring all under it's umbrella together as a single entity. Of course, this does introduce the possibiliy that with some legal manuevering someone could screw us all en masse. It's just an offhand idea though, perhaps someone with more legal knowledge than myself can take the base premise and turn it into a workable idea.

  • I am informed that the company responsible for shutting down Dave's Classics is Sony.
  • To be fair, this doesn't hinder Linux developers at all. These are OpenGL and Direct3D wrappers, and the only hardware that works with OpenGL (well, Mesa) in Linux is 3dfx hardware working with an Glide->OpenGL wrapper!
  • Glide is supposedly (don't know, haven't used it) MUCH easier to write to than OpenGL or Direct3D, plus it works better on 3dfx hardware than OpenGL or Direct3d does, to the disadvantage that it doesn't work on other cards (though awhile ago, there effectively weren't any other cards). Plus it works on Linux!
  • One of the guys who made the things mentioned that he originally downloaded the Glide SDK, read the EULA, and decided that 3dfx would be able to sue him if he made something using that, so he deleted it. Then, instead, he just read all the 3rd-party Glide programming examples on the web, which freed him from the shackles of the EULA. But does 3dfx care? No, they'll still sue him (more likely just scare him into taking it down). What good do cleanroom tactics do if the burden of proof will be on us?
  • He would, but I doubt he has the legal fees. He's a high school student. And 3dfx has a lot to lose by not going after him, so they probably will, and he'll just give up.
  • I know people have mentioned how this is a stupid thing for 3DFX to do, cracking down on these coders. I definitely agree with this line of thinking, but not for the same reason.

    I think that emulators are a great way for people to get a good look at something they don't normally have access to. People with high-end Voodoo-equivalent cards wouldn't buy a brand new video card anyways, and people with low-end cards get to see what these GLide-programs look like, which gives 3DFX some easy exposure. None of the wrappers are production-quality enough to really give the real thing a run for it's money.

    In summary, the people at 3DFX are probably going to get more negative publicity than positive publicity by this move from their prospective consumers. Their hardcore gamer audience probably won't notice the difference. And anyone with an interest in shooting 3DFX down, or keeping the video card people on equal ground, is gonna badmouth them well into the year 2000.


    Fork
  • ATi hardware has an OpenGL ICD available for the Rage Pro. Even though it's still a beta version, I've been using it since before January, with no ill effects.

    http://www.atitech.com/betadrv/index.html

    Also, ATi's Rage Pro has broken DirectX support, as any DirectX author will tell you. If you've ever played Shogo on a Rage Pro-equipped card, you can tell this right away. (Ditto Grim Fandango, where the Z-buffering doesn't work correctly.)

    I don't know about the ATi Rage 128, though.

    Fork
  • According to id, for Quake III, you want a TNT, or a TNT2 when they come out. nvidia has released a full GL driver for win32, and its pretty well optimized. Now they just need to see the light about everything other than win32.
  • Well I know one vendors whose products I won't be buying for a very very long time.

    Exactly what I feel too. Someone should create a web-site dedicated to logging hardware- and software-company screw-ups (and "hostile" policies, etc) so we can check that site before buying something to know which products to boycot, and maybe monitor that site to see which stocks are going to drop soon ;)

  • If it's a 'cleanroom' implementation (or even jsut from specs), surely a 'wrapper' is just an emulator??


    Think about it....


    In America at least (I'm not sure about over here in the UK, but what's that got to do with it?), there is precedent that emulators are legal. Nintendo and Sony can't be both wrong ;).

    3D/FX are making a big mistake if they think that this will, in any way help their market share. They have mde all the wrong decisions since the Banshee.

    1. They are not letting other manufacturers (such as Diamond) use their chips. Sure, 3DFX know their chips, but can they make/market a board???
    2. Jumping on the open source 'bandwagon' with their half-hearted Banshee and GLIDE 'announcements' (IE. when someone else has done all the work) was transarent to anyone with their eyes open.
    3. GLIDE was in a damned good position to become the defacto standard for 3D on Linux. They control the GLIDE 'standard'. With their crackdown on the emulators, they are denying themselves that market.
    4. The OpenSource community can come up with something equally as fast, more functional and better (X-platorm) than GLIDE if need be. 3DFX have provided that need.


    I was certain that I was gonna upgrade to a VooDoo3 but now I'm not at all certain.

  • ATI Rage Fury actually has some very good OpenGL; better than 3dfx, not quite as good as nVidia. Getting better each week, however =)

    Don't forget Permedia, with its P2 chip, fairly good at D3d and very good at OpenGL, though the P2 isn't a consumer game board.

    Also you forgot the Matrox G200, which have worse OpenGL than 3dfx, but very good D3d and excellent image quality.

    Then there is S3's Savage3d, which is cheap, good at D3d, and has the Metal API.

    AS
  • Looks like 3dfx cards are to video what winmodems are to communications. Not an option.

    (OpenGL rules! :-)
  • Umm... I still tend to use Windows for my games.
  • When a corporation commits an actual crime, it is not the whole corporation who did it. The corporation figures out which of its employees committed the crime and vomits them forth, along with incriminatory eveidence, for the justi^H^H^H^H^Hlegal system to devour. So the DA gets a scapegoat, the stockholders get their business.

    For example, you say we dumped toxins in your front lawn? Here, it wasn't us, it was this manager and these two truck drivers. Here's a memo to prove it, and oh, by the way, here is our policy (ignore that wet ink!) that expressly forbids such behavior. It's not our fault, they were disobeying orders!
  • You're talking about a contractual agreement between 3DFX and developers. If there is no agreement, no EULA, not even a legal notification of what they can and cannot do, then contract law can do nothing. However, intellectual property law could still hang them out to dry. Most books don't come with any sort of legal notice (except a copyright notice, which is legally completely unnecessary). It is still illegal to photocopy the whole thing without permission. It is also illegal to create a work derived from the book without permission.

    IANAL (obviously), but if a developer downloads 3DFX's intellectal property, and uses it to create another product, I think that 3DFX could have a case for halting distribution. Not that it's right, or even smart, to pursue it.
  • When the PC BIOS was cloned, they had a pretty clever way of doing it. It was like this.

    You divide your programmers into Group A and Group B and follow this process.
    1. Group B studies an IBM BIOS function and determines its specifications.
    2. Group B slides the specification under the door to Group A.
    3. Group A codes a function to the given specs. 4. Group A stuffs the code under the door to Group B.
    4. Group B compares the code from the IBM BIOS and the code from Group A. If there is any similarity, they slide a message under the door that says "Do it again, but do it differently!" (back to step 3)
    5. If there is no similarity, they go on to the next function.

    In this way, all Group A ever saw was what amounted to an API. Group B existed to make sure that they wrote code that was different from the original, and to serve as a buffer so that Group A could legitimately claime that they were not remotely influenced by the original code, and that their code was therefore not a derived work.

    This would likely not have been defensible in court if IBM had patented its BIOS; we would just now be seeing the beginning of a clone market - if, that is, anyone wanted to clone 17-year-old PCs. I understand they make pretty good text terminals...
  • I wrote this around a month ago in response to some 3dfx reccomendation/defense that was going on on slashdot a month or so ago. It is a repost, but since I posted it late (so nobody read it) I think it is worthwhile to repost, and not spam. Here goes:

    3dfx seems to do the same kind of thing that pisses everyone off about Microsoft. That is, they invent something non-standard and substandard -- the glide library -- and force developers to use it if they want valid performance from 3dfx chipsets. And since they have a huge userbase, as they were the only realistic choice for 3d acceleration just a few years ago, they can do it with impudence and a self-assured snigger directed to users of other accelerators.

    Sense a pattern here, Slashdotters? That's right, they've embraced modern 3D technology (to the extent that you can call their brain-damaged color depth limit and other bad design 'modern'), and extended it to the point where you have to buy their trash to get said technology in some games. They are, therefore, evil.

    As even more proof, take into account this latest thing where they are assaulting makers of Glide wrappers. Remember, these wrapper libraries would only be used by people who ALREADY HAD a 3D accelerator, and therefore wouldn't have affected 3dfx's market share one whit.

    This, when combined with the 30% share of slashdot that uses 3dfx trash (via a slashdot poll some months in the past), goes to show how how hypocritical some people can be about issues like "open/free design" and "unfair business practices."

    Just something to think about, 3dfx supporters.
  • A good argument, but remember the fact that 3dfx's glide implementation is 100% faster than their Direct3D implementation, and their OpenGL ICD is nonexistant. That means that for any company that wants to really support 3dfx -- and every company should as 3dfx has ~50% of the hardcore gaming market -- must use glide to get realistic performance. This amounts to shoving glide down their throats, as they have no other means of getting fast and nice 3D to 50% of their audience than glide.

    Of course, a counter argument would be id software, who were powerful enough to make 3dfx write a wrapper to map certain OpenGL calls onto glide. Counter counter argument is easy: many many developers aren't as powerful as id, and couldn't do such a thing. Even if they could, if 3dfx weren't evil they wouldn't have to :-)
  • And who can forget the genius scheme of putting "3Dfx required" stickers on games that didn't even use Glide... panicing... hell, they're pissing their pants.
  • Is there a server anywhere in the world where you can put up stuff and it's immune to legal challenges? Any country that either has no lawsuits or even laws?
    www.openglide.antilles anyone?


  • Crosby, Heafey, Roach & May
    Four Embarcadero Center
    San Francisco, CA 94111-4106
    USA
    nkoenig@chrm.com
    415-659-6792

    Sincerely,
    Nathan Koenig

    Same scum for both the tale of woe [angelic-coders.com] and the stuff on the underground site. Somebody find me lat/lon coords and ill get a tactical nuke out there post haste.
  • I wish those hackers spent their time on projects with a better chance of survival. It's their time to waste, but I hope they've learned something.

    I disagree. This is not a waste of effort. I hope all you would be coders and hackers emulate this. Code what you feel is intersting and fun. If you get sued, leak your source as quickly and as widely as you can. DON'T HIDE YOUR CODE. Companies and corporations are tied strongly to controlling the movement of material goods. Show them they have no control over what you think and the information you create. Spread everything far and wide. That is why information is fundamentally different from a car, or a house, or a TV.

    The whole point of open development is to keep companies like 3dfx from fucking you over when they feel threatened. Every time a corporation hides their inability to compete with marketing and legal wrangling is evidence of a chink in the armor. Don't let them shore up their defenses.

    Go for the jugular.

  • 3dfx have released their 3d specs to SOMEBODY and have done so for more than a year. So in this sense, they have offered more 3d support than anyone else ( no-one else has offered any )

    What 3dfx has done is they have dealt with the free software community in a method that destroys the inherent parallelism in the development model. Yes, we have glide for linux, but it is consistently behind what is available for windows. If you are willing to accept that kind of second rate treatment because it's the best that has been offered to you, then go ahead, be my guest. But the sad reality is that they feel that they don't have to deal with our community any more than they already have because they have Daryll working in his free time writing drivers for them.

    We cannot let the industry think that this kind of treatment is acceptable. I realize things are changing, but they will only change insofar as we show companies that we are a viable market and deserve the same treatment as other market segments. Even companies that have 'supported' linux for a long time (like id) still release their linux ports many months after their windows ports, and they're still buggy as hell and don't work right for quite some time after that (and yes I know this will be different for quake 3, but that still doesen't change the fact that we've gotten the shaft up until now)

    So go ahead and complain about the lack of support from 3dfx , but don't forget to complain about ALL of the other guys.

    You are right here. The others are just as bad if not worse. But that doesen't mean 3dfx is good for our community.

    Oh, btw, they didn't JUST release the 2d spec for the Banshee. THey released the glide source code and the vodoo / voodoo2 drivers. Which is a tad more than any other 3d card maker has done

    I'd sure like to see where the glide source code has been released to. Daryll's got it. But if I want to see how they handle something specific, I can't even ask him. It does do us some good, but progress is painfully slow. And if you're thinking that them posting Daryll's port of glide on their website constitutes releasing it, you've got something coming. I think you need to listen to what you're saying, you're starting to sound like one of their marketing drones.

  • Agreed! Can't be supporting the bad guys, even if it would be the cheap way to get good Quake performance. We'll just have to wait and see for sure what other manufacturers are supported by QIII when it ships.
  • Why are Glide wrappers important in the first place? Is Glide superior to other 3D standards such as OpenGL or Direct3D? Does it have wider support from application developers?
  • i say just get a card with GL support.. screw glide, screw all the other API's.. GL was invented for a reason, it covers all the necessary aspects of graphics for gaming, and it can obviously be accelerated very quickly and for a very affordable price.. while i have a 3dfx card, i am looking to dump it for dvd/2d/3d support all in one, as i can't stand waisting 3 slots for what one agp board can do..
  • What are you talking about? Corporations are fined all the time for breaking the law. In extreme cases a corporate charter can be revoked. Secondly, corporations already do not enjoy the same rights as "people" or "citizens" or whatever. Corporations cannot vote. Corporations can not be drafted, serve time in jail, run for public office, etc... It is true that the Bill of Rights ddoes not apply to corportations, but it doesn't apply to you or me either, only the Federal Government. Corportations = citizen only as a "legal fiction" I believe the law states. Remember, this allows you to sue a corporation as well as the other way around. Of course, I'm sure you wish this was only a one-way street. Sue them all you want, but God forbid a corporation attempt to protect its property.

  • Let your wallet do your talking (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The is the only way to change the mentality
    of companies like this is to by buy another
    product that more seats your needs. If you feel
    stongly about this issue, then don't buy a 3dfx product. Nuff said.

    Capitalism is a great thing both for the producer and the consumer.

  • See subject line for more information. :)
  • Think about it.. Quake III is comming out any day now.. Time to upgrade for some. It would be very funny to see all other 3d card makers' sales jump BUT 3Dfx.

    AFAIK the only board that will initially be supported for Linux Q3 is the 3dfx Voodoo series. I read this in an interview with Zoid (id programmer) about 4-6 weeks ago. Anyone have more up to date info?

    TedC

  • 3dfx is already in enough trouble trying to compete in the market with an uncompetitive product. The new Voodoo3 has 16-bit external rendering in 3D, a 16-bit z-buffer, and 16 MB RAM, whereas most of their competition is releasing boards with 32-bit external rendering, a 24-bit (NVIDIA and ATI?) or 32-bit (Matrox and 3D-Labs) z-buffer, and 32 MB RAM.

    Hindering Linux developers and users is just going to compound their problems further. Don't they understand that their competition doesn't care about Glide?

    Matrox recently released 3D specs for the G200; I assume G400 specs will be released as well. It looks like Matrox will continue to be the graphics board of choice for Linux users for the next 6 months, unless NVIDIA repents and does something wonderful. :-)

    TedC

    dang it, I keep forgetting to log in...

  • If you can submit a link showing their intention to do this, please do

    Here's a link to a Matrox G200 project, but it doesn't look like they've really gotten started yet.

    reality.sgi.com/ripperda_ engr/glx/matrox_news.html [sgi.com]

    TedC

  • While I certainly agree that the way 3dfx
    is unsupportive of anything but Glide(R), etc.,
    the programs as listed at glideunderground.com
    do go against the EULA of the Glide SDK, and this
    is illegal. As I read this site, I get the impression that the author's own efforts with
    clide, which is a clean room implementation
    of Glide, was done because he didn't want to
    get in trouble for breaking the EULA.

    So 3dfx has every right to request the removal
    of those files. And just because a company
    acts unethically as 3dfx appears to have done
    with this situation, it does not give anyone
    else the right to break legal contracts in order
    to acheive better goals.

    The better solution for those bothered by this
    would be to have petitioned 3dfx to be more open,
    or contact the makes of big games (id, Valve, etc)
    and petition them to *not* support 3dfx unless
    they become more open, and to possibly contact
    the bigger press at large to alert them to these
    issues. 3dfx's financal and market position is
    very fragile right now, and a bit of bad press
    such as the propriatary nature of 3dfx Glide(R)
    can be bad -- and can possibly cause a quick
    change of heart at 3dfx.

    IMO & IANAL.
  • There's a shift in 3Dfx focus from being a tech company into one that depends heavily on marketing. A few years ago, they started the whole cheap 3D accelerator market and they are now getting fierce competitions from nVidia, S3, and ATI.

    It seems clear to us now that 3Dfx has responded by pouring more money into their marketing instead of the R&D dept. There was an article on tom's hardware about marketing programs that rewards hardware review sites for pushing 3Dfx products. Also the recent announcement of their support for linux which was purely a media stunt.

    This latest move of shutting down the underground site is quite moronic, IMHO. I own a TNT but I was able to dabble with Glide precisely because there's a wrapper available. Since 3Dfx is already losing their market share, this move will assure they'll lose more mindshare.

    Heh.. at least it'll be easier to choose between TNT2 and V3. Well, it actually depends on who would have a linux driver available first... which is not hard to guess.

  • try Jack's Chipset Comparison Guide [3dgaming.com]. Personally, I have a i740, so I don't know much about the high end stuff. (It was the cheapest way to get OpenGL ICD support (on Windows) and has a fairly decent closed source driver for XFree86, so I'm not complaining.
  • What kind of contortions did we all end up going through just to get Riva support for X? Have we seen a single thing from them for Mesa yet- other than "we're working on something..."? Well, they've been working on "something" for nearly a year and a half now (That's when they told me that same thing....).

    Matrox, even though they took their sweet time to get it out to us, kept their promises and released the register level specs to their chips in the G200 family. There's work right now from several groups to make 3D support from the G200 possible under Linux.
  • I'll give it a shot, and discuss some other things.

    Cards 1st:
    3Dfx Voodoo/Voodoo2/Voodoo3: Glide and D3D. Linux support via Glide. And there is a mini-(quake)-GL for playing GLquake, both under linux and win32. Voodoo2/3 support dual texturing. Voodoo3 is really just overclocked SLI'd Voodoo2's on the same board. We measure the exact same speed with a V3-2000 against 2 Voodoo2's, except that the V3 can do 1280x1024 and 1600x1200, which the SLI'd V2's can't.
    Note: these boards are so fast that the limitation on poly count is floating point power of the CPU. Those V3's can fill something like 60fps in 1600x1200. The only limitation is how many poly's you can set up with your CPU. My celeron450a doesn't come close to the limit on my SLI'd V2's. I'm not sure what I can say on 3Dfx's next generation board, Napalm, except that it'll be really cool. Now if Glide/Linux worked on the Alphas, that would be far out. Anyone ever try it?
    nVidia RivaTNT/TNT2:D3D, tho X servers exist (you can use them as 2D cards in Linux, as I'm doing now). The TNT is about as fast as a Voodoo2 running D3D. But Glide is twice as fast as D3D, so the Voodoo's still have an advantage. QuakeGL's exist for these as well as for the older Riva128 (about as fast as a Voodoo1). TNT2 has received favorable reviews, showing it's about exactly as fast as a Voodoo3 in D3D (at least the one I saw). There remains some debate. I hope to get a TNT2 in a few weeks and answer the questions for myself. BTW "TNT" stands for TwiNTexel, i.e. dual texturing. My understanding is that the TNT2 is a TNT on steroids (.25u process instead of .35, much overclocked, etc.).
    ATI Rage128: pretty fast, I'm waiting for mine to arrive so I don't know how fast. Is now standard issue for PowerMacs. D3D, QuakeGL, and a couple of Mac-specific API's no one cares about (what, me, biased?). Will continue to be a very important board, since ATI has key OEM deals. You can expect this board to be pretty much standard issue with low-end PC's, much as the old RagePro was.
    3DLabs Permidia3: Unknown quantity. Will support D3D and presumably a full GL since 3DLabs really makes high-end GL boards. The Permidia2 was originally like the FireGL 1000 from Diamond or something.
    Matrox G200, G400: The G200 is a respectable D3D board, about 70% as fast as a Voodoo2 by our measurements. The G400 will rock, and have crazy bumpmapping features. We're trying to get a G400 before E3 (www.e3expo.com), and we have to promise Matrox that we'll write bump mapping support by E3 :). Our main man Omar at Matrox tells us the G400 is 3x as fast as a G200. That would be pretty frikkin' fast. I'm not sure if there are mini/full-GL's for these boards.
    S3 Savage3D, S4: The Savage3D seemed like a decent board when we saw it at E3 last year, but we could only run about 5 frames of Fire and Darkness before it locked up. Alpha silicon, kinda buggy :). We never heard from S3 nor saw a Savage3D again. Now they're back with the S4. It's supposed to have bump I think, but I have never actually tested either board. D3D at least, I don't know what else. G200 Xserver is out there.
    Rendition V2200: Saw this at E3 last May. Supports D3D and RedLine, Rendition's own API. But they disappeared completely and we have heard nothing from them.

    I think that's everything important.

    Now: why Glide? And why do I think 3Dfx has a case here? Because 3Dfx didn't intend Glide to be an API for everyone else. Glide was their weapon against the bloat of D3D. And those developers who chose only to write for Glide made a decision about their software that these wrappers violate.

    D3D is crufty. D3D is slow. The tiny subsets of GL supported to run Quake are not enough to do every game, and due to M$'s attempt to fsck GL on win32, they really link on top of D3D, so they're extra special slow.

    Glide is not the answer, IMHO. GL is supposed to be the standard. Blasphemous as it is, To blatantly steal a line from Scherer, I really criticize id and Carmack for this one: id had the leadership position to demand that full, fast GL's be written for all major hardware and platforms. Instead, they chose to ask for a crufty, id-specific quasi-GL blob, useless to anyone except them.

    No wonder developers choose to write for nice, clean Glide. It's easy, relatively friendly (or at least straightforward, since it's very low level), and literally 2x as fast as D3D.

    But how much would it take for these companies to put a few coders on writing full GL's for win32 and linux? Look how much good it's done 3Dfx -- they're way out front as far as developer loyalty. And they've now got their own in-house guys doing Glide/Linux. In this case, trusting M$ when they say "oh don't worry, we'll take care of the API" is a really bad idea.
  • #1
    ----------------
    Are glide wrappers available natively for the Mac and Linux?

    Some Mac games only supported the choices of 3Dfx or no 3D acceleration. The ATI card used in the new G3's is an excellent card, but unless the game takes advantage of RAVE3D, QuickDraw3D, or OpenGL once the beta drivers ship.. naturally I want these cool effects enabled for games that only did 3Dfx modes.

    #2
    ---------------------
    Regarding the Win32 Glide wrappers, and gameplay under VirtualPC.. does anyone know if there would be an advantage to it under VirtualPC for the Mac?

    If you hve a "real" 3Dfx card in a Mac, and you run a 3dfx-enabled game under the emulator, the video calls are remapped directly to the Mac driver instead of being emulated. It's supposed to give much better performance for things like Quake II.

    If I understand this correctly:
    1) Glide wrappers redirect 3dfx calls to non-3dfx hardware, essentially "fooling" software to thinking you have a real 3dfx card so you can enable "3dfx-only" features.

    2) The Glide wrappers support the ATI Rage 128 at least on the PC.

    3) Does this make sense where I am going? I can test this myself but are there any toold to "detect" if you have 3Dfx? I could always eyeball a game to see if it looks faster but this is not accurate.
  • I am amazed that we are sitting here contemplating a boycott of the only 3d card manufacturer who supports our OS of choice. Well , good luck finding a 3d card that works under linux if you do that.

    3dfx are LONG TIME supporters of linux. I guess you guys would rather support the windows-only crowd.

    Maybe 3dfx has commited a sin, but among the card manufacturers, they are probably the LEAST deserving of a boycott from linux users. It seems ridiculous for us to boycott the only 3d card maker that supports us.

  • 1. No Linux 3D driver, No sale for me. 3dfx has provided drivers (albeit proprietary) for Linux for a _long_ time now. They even pay a guy to write 3d drivers. NVidia just says "bugger off" on the 3d part.

    2. Recent reports on the hardware sites tell of NVidia lying _again_ about the TNT2's processor clock speed. It seems Tom and the rest of the bunch got overclocked boards. The actual clock speed of the TNT2 will be 125Mhz, not 150Mhz. They pulled the same stunt with the first TNT. At least this time they aren't lying about the fabrication process,too( .25 micron, really, this time).

    The whole 3D accelerator industry is cutthroat and crooked. One must choose between which company stomps all over ethics the least and provides what you, the consumer, desire in a product. For most Linux users wishing to play Quake under Linux, the only choice has been 3dfx. And that is why I'll look beyond the Glide wrapper thing,( which has UltraHLE written all over it, check dejanews and see why people _really_ want Glide wrappers ) and get my Voodoo3 as soon as they arrive at buycomp. ( Daryll's said that the new server shouldwork with Voodoo3, nothing like a trial by fire-the source is out there!)
  • Sorry, 3dfx. Your days are OVER.

    I was considering buying a 3500 (I use an SLI rig) but not anymore. Glide is no longer worth the investment as good game designers realize writing for one driver is not beneficial to the bottom line.

    So you attack the developers of third party wrappers because YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW your upcoming product is INFERIOR to the competition in regards to visual quality.

    32 bit won, and your still playing in a 16 bit world, beating on people who can help promote Glide but instead you sick your 2 bit lawyers on them.

    Get real. You're out of my system when TNT2 comes out.

    //

  • ``Why can a company get a fine for something that you or I would get 20 in the pokey for?''

    I think, under certain circumstances, the officers of a corporation can go to jail when the corporation loses a court case. Maybe they have to be explicitly named in a suit for this to happen.

    At my last employer, my boss was named the new V.P. of IT and specifically declined to be made CIO. He was worried that the company could get sued (there was already at least one lawsuit in progress against it) and he could get named as a co-defendent and be made officially liable for something.

    Personally, I'd like to see more corporate officers behave more those in Japan and take more personal responsibility for the actions of the company; after all, they are the ones setting corporate policy. When their (Japanese) company screws up big time, they resign... publicly... at a big new conference... and in tears.

  • As far as I am concerned, 3Dfx is spinning out of control:
    • They haven't learned that the more of your APIs people adopt, the better.
    • Their packages claim OpenGL compatibility, but they have never delivered on many of their products.
    • Their strategy for the next generation 3Dfx chipset seems a bit greedy, too.
    • There are better chips around these days.
    If 3dfx were the only game in town, this might be worth fighting. It might not be all that hard either: it seems pretty questionable to me whether they have a legal leg to stand on (in particular in Europe, where the ability to re-implement APIs is actually considered a right).

    But there are a lot of other good 3D graphics board vendors out there. If 3Dfx doesn't want more developers and users of their APIs, let's just buy different boards and use more standard APIs.

  • The thing that troubles me about this mess is, you're not supposed to be able to stop anyone from interpreting your language! Oh, yeah, IANAL. As, I recall, this was all hashed out in the early '90s during the great Look 'n' Feel lawsuits. In the Lotus 123/Borland Quattro suit, the court ruled that you cannot sue your competitor for making a product that responds to your command language, even if you invented it. IIRC.

    This 3dfx bullshit (that's what it is, so sue me if my language singes your virgin ears (oops, there I go again)) looks to me like exactly the same situation. They may restrict people from using their SDK, but going after "Clide" or any other totally reverse-engineered interpreter is crossing the line.
  • This one solution, but I don't think it would give all the benefits provided by a corporation specifially for protecting Open Source Programmers. Especially if it were incorporated in another country. I imagine many companies would just start ignoring the little people if they had to bring a lawsuit against a foreign corporation.

    Also, as far as legal defence, imagine if we could get 1000 people to donate 50$ each (tax deductable, of course. I think there is precedent for donating money to a charity that will turn around and use that money in your legal defence if needed.) to OpenSource, Inc.. 50k$ for legal defence. perhaps per year. Add into that lawyers who are willing to work at substantially reduced prices for non-profit corps. and we've got a very robust solution. A disclaimer. I make no claim that I know anything about this. it's just some random cruft off the top of my head, but it may have potential..

    Matt
  • I agree with you on this one. Here is the evidence.

    a) A letter posted on tomshardware.com indicates the following... In addition, we will favor sites that provide "integration" with our banner efforts . http://www4.tomshardware.com/releases/99q1/990226/ index1.html

    b) They have been consistantly loosing out the reviews against NVIDIA's TNT2 based boards. Again a review posted on Tom's site can be seen on http://www4.tomshardware.com/releases/99q1/990312/ index.html

    I am a proud owner of one of the original Voodoo boards and was seriously considering getting a new Voodoo 3 for my new PC. However, this episode and their virtual refusal to support OpenGL ICDs has convinced me to wait till I can find a good stable NVIDIA based board.

    Time to start shorting their stock :->

    Shri

  • It may be a stretch, but I'm wondering if some sort of class action lawsuit against 3dfx might be possible in this case. There are a lot of people out there who are, from a legal POV, being damaged by 3dfx's policy. Last time I checked, there were some pretty definitive legal precedents (e.g. the legal battle between IBM and PC clone manufacturers who had to reproduce the functionality of the BIOS) that held that APIs are not proprietary and are not intellectual property. 3dfx's SDK certainly is their IP, but that's not the issue.

    It's obviously possible to develop a glide wrapper without using their SDK. Their legal ground seems to be pretty shaky on this one to me. The problem is, how can high school or college students afford to fight them in court? I say either a class action lawsuit by the potential users of the wrappers, or maybe look to the EFF [eff.org] for help. How about emailing their Director of Legal Services [eff.org].

    Randy Weems

  • Since when has 3dfx supported linux?

    3dfx has never as much lifted a finger to our benefit. All the glide porting and such was done _independently_ by Daryll Strauss in his free time. Under and NDA I might add. Apparently they think their intelectual property is more important than our freedom and ability to use their hardware.

    You might say that they are good because they release specs to their hardware. I say bullshit because the only specs they've released are those to the 2D chipset in the voodoo banshee, and only _after_ Daryll had ported XFree to it. Still nothing else.

    If they did actually release specs when they were useful, then we would have glide running on the voodoo banshee. But as it is, the only person able to do that is Daryll. I have this little theory that if 3dfx knew what was good for them (which they obvoiously don't) they would have hired people in house to do this long ago, and we would all be running voodoo banshees for 3d modeling and such. But no, they've got their collective head rammed so far up their ass that it's not possible for them to see the light.

  • When all else fails... Litigate
  • Well I know one vendors whose products I won't be
    buying for a very very long time.

    Alan
  • OK, so is there a list of which graphics cards use which technologies and the characteristics of them?
  • Unfortunately, GLIDE is just about the only game
    in town (presently) for support of 3D hardware
    on Linux. Other projects are being worked on,
    but are not *production ready* yet. Personally,
    I am keeping a close eye on GGI3D. Mesa, an
    OpenGL clone, is available for Linux but has
    limited hardware acceleration support (mainly
    using GLIDE). Direct3D is availble only on
    Windows and is a poor imitation of OpenGL anyway.

  • This is getting old (Score:3)

    by Andrej Marjan ( 1012 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @10:27AM (#1943731)
    It's getting worse. One of the major points of MAI, I believe--I know it was in a treaty, I just don't remember which one--would have allowed corporations to sue national governments for perceived loss of revenue through such actions as protection of the environment or protection of the citizenry of the host country.
    --

  • Is this what happened to Dave's classics? (Score:3)

    by Sleepy ( 4551 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @08:48AM (#1943732) Homepage
    There's hints that it was a hardware manufacturer that closed them down.

    Freedom is dead. We're all workers for the queen bee now. Reality sucks - can I join the Matrix? :-/

    Methinks one of the main reasons for the World Bank is to open up countries to the influence of rotten corporations like Microsoft, 3Dfx and so on.

  • restricting the 'use' of the sdk programs (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @11:11AM (#1943733)
    some guy yesterday, under the 'FSF new definition of free software' topic, said that you cant sue someone over the particular 'use' of a program, you can only sue them for violating
    a copyright or a patent.


    Not strictly true, I think. An "End User License Agreement" is exactly that - a contract that the user has to agree to before they're allowed to use the software. Because the user is "voluntarily" accepting the terms of the contract, software companies can put pretty much anything they want in there, and it will be binding. If the customer doesn't like it, they can use a competitor's software instead.


    AFAIK.

  • ATI hardware runs: Direct3D.

    Number Nine: Direct3D (somewhat)


    We (alt.software inc.) released an OpenGL-to-D3D wrapper based on Mesa code fairly recently (with source etc.). This should allow any card that supports hardware D3D acceleration to accelerate OpenGL applications. YMMV, but from what I've seen it works reasonably well.


    You can find it at
    [altsoftware.com]
    http://www.altsoftware.com
    (click on "OpenGL"), or read about it at
    a href=
    "http://www.opengl.org/News/Archives99/Feb99.htm l">
    http://www.opengl.org/News/Archives99/Feb99.html
    (look for 2/23/99 under the "Developer" section).

  • Try this one instead (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @11:18AM (#1943735)
    Ok, here is the second link again, this time done right.

    And yes, I am too lazy to cut-n-paste! So it is appreciated (if done right ;-)


    Thanks. I feel very silly now. I think that's 3 out of 3 times that I've made a typo while mentioning something that our company has done. Let's see how long I can keep this streak going O:).

  • The second link. (Score:3)

    by Christopher Thomas ( 11717 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @10:53AM (#1943736)
    Looks like I dropped an angle bracket. For those too lazy to cut-and-paste, the opengl.org link is:


    http://www.opengl.org/News/Archives99/Feb99.html
    (look for 2/23/99 under the "Developer" section).

  • This is getting old (Score:3)

    by Thanatos ( 15980 ) on Thursday April 08, 1999 @09:06AM (#1943737)
    I find that the recent trend of Corporations suing the "little guy" to be deeply disturbing. For all of it's potential, the American legal system has fallen quite far from the nest of individual freedom and liberty that it was founded on. Let's not forget that many of our laws and freedoms were in direct response the heavy handed monarchy that we escaped from. How is our current situation any better? Instead of the king of england, we now have faceless corporations, supposed to be a single legal entity under law (just as _any_ citizen is supposed to be) rising to power and using their near-limitless resources to stop the actions of those, who, in many circumstances, are promoting their brand name and public awareness without asking for a single dime in return. A corporation is (to my understanding) A way to insulate owners and employees from damages resulting from the actions of the corporation as a whole. This should not be a get out of jail free card. this concept does not sit well with a lassaiz-faire (sp?) economy. It basically allows and corporation to break the law (or at least bend it, and abuse it) and face little or no consequences, because, as we all know, it's bad for government to interfere in the private sector. Perhaps the Open Source community should band together and form a non-profit corporation under which programmers can "officially" volunteer their time and skills for the corporation, then, and legal challenges would go up against that entity, and it would insulate the individual from legal damages, as well as making it much harder for the "unenlightened" companies to continue their behaviour as of late.

    Sorry for rambling, this just really jerks my chain. Contructive criticism always welcomed, flames to /dev/null.
  • If you're referring to APIs, here's a quick scoop:

    3DFX users have: Glide, Direct3D (mostly), and OpenGL (partially)
    NVIDIA users have: Direct3D, OpenGL (mostly) and Glide (with a wrapper)
    Rendition users get: Direct3D, OpenGL, and RRedline. (There's also an old broken Glide->RRedline wrapper)
    ATI hardware runs: Direct3D.
    Number Nine: Direct3D (somewhat)

    Everything else in the consumer space is pretty much beneath radar.

  • This is getting old (Score:3)

    by remande ( 31154 ) <remande@bigfoot. c o m> on Thursday April 08, 1999 @10:02AM (#1943739) Homepage
    Something I never understood. Companies are regarded as legal entities--essentially people--for most legal purposes. They get the rights guaranteed for "the people", and in most civil law are considered as people. Why, then, are they immune to criminal prosecution? Why can a company get a fine for something that you or I would get 20 in the pokey for? Why does a corporation enjoy more legal rights and priveleges than a flesh-and-blood citizen? There are two ways to resolve this one. The first is to declare that a corporation is a citizen, and can be tried, convicted, and punished for felonies and misdemeanors. When a company commits a crime, it literally does the time--perhaps with a shutdown. A seven-year sentence gets split between the employees and served as time that the company cannot engage in business. The inability to sell product for a month or so is an excellent deterrant in most cases. The second remedy is to specifically state that a company is not a person, and does not enjoy the same rights and priveleges as a "person". That is, the Bill of Rights and similar documents do not apply to corporations. Perhaps another bill of corporate rights needs to be made; perhaps not. Of course, the problem with this is the nature of that bill of corporate rights. I'd be waiting for "Congress shall pass no law exposing a corporation to civil action from a person"...

  • SDK legal stuff (Score:3)

    by BLKMGK ( 34057 ) <morejunk4me@@@hotmail...com> on Thursday April 08, 1999 @09:41AM (#1943740) Homepage Journal
    I've been following some of those projects for awhile. Early on some of the authors noted that at least one of the SDK downloads didn't come with the legal docs, essentially not binding them to any sort of legal red tape. As I recall 3DFX was notified of this but never changed the download. Now these authors are having lawyers call upon them? It would seem to me that if 3DFX did indeed allow an SDK to be downloaded without including any sort of legal notice that they've given up any ability to go after these guys - assuming that's the SDK that was used for their project.

    I'm a big 3DFX fan and have really enjoyed my last two VooDoo purchases but if 3DFX isn't careful they're going to aggravate customers such as myself and lose their competitive edge. I believe it's time they opened up the GLIDE API and supported wrappers. This way the API would continue to be supported by software manufacturers and would likely have a speed edge on their hardware over emulated hardware.

    Does 3DFX really think in this competitive environment that they can act like a bull in a china shop? Oh yeah, they did sort of cut off Diamond and the other companies didn't they - I guess they do feel that way.... (sigh)

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