That is, if they had bought 3dfx instead of nVidia (and oh how I wish that were true). Do you think they would have added Glide support to their drivers or at least released it as open source? Unlike nVidia who stuffed it away somewhere never to see the light of day again.
Don't complain. nVidia aren't going around threatening legal procedings against anyone who uses Glide other than to drive one of their cards.
3DFX was rather unpleasant to people making wrappers. Since NVIDIA owns the rights it could be very unpleasant as well (there are many companies sitting jealously on their old assets even if it brings absolutely nothing to them any more).
Be glad that NVIDIA just ignores its 3DFX heritage - so wrappers can be made.
Mirek
ATI might have even put in support to have 3DFx/Glide support be detected into the hardware for all we know. While I appreciate that Nvidia isn't going after people for putting out Glide wrappers, they also havn't done anything with it either.
Nvidia also probably knows that if they tried to shut down all the Glide wrappers out there, they would have a lot of people refusing to buy their products because of it since ATI cards are very good. When you are the undisputed king in an industry, you can get away with a lot more than if you have competition.
wrote:or at least released it as open source?
The Glide drivers actually are open source. 3dfx released them as open source at some point.
