as days pass by

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.

Please let this be real. This would make Linux people recommend ATI over nVidia every day and twice on Sundays, because they’d be perfectly supported, it might encourage nVidia to do the same, and it’d help ATI regain some Linux desktop share (because at the moment people actively recommend that you stay away from ATI). Plus, it might help tame Intel a bit, since Intel integrated graphics is in danger of becoming the best supported chipset under Linux, and AMD (ATI’s new owners) probably don’t want that. It’d let me run Xgl too, but that’s got nothing to do with it.