[Gllug] Geforce2

[David Damerell]

On Wednesday, 23 Jan 2002, Vincent AE Scott wrote:
>For the time being at least, nVidia is the market leader.  3DFX had it,
>and they lost it.  undoubteldy nVidia will eventually loose it aswell.
>But each year there seems to be less and less choice in the GFX card
>business.  IMHO, Matrox are going to be next to vanish.  Who knows, NV
>may actually achieve total dominance in the market place, and become the
>MS of 3D.

I can see three possibilities here.
1) Nvidia will dominate no matter what.
2) Nvidia may dominate, but other companies may just squeeze enough
market share to fight back if enough people buy their cards.
3) Nvidia's current market share is as good as it will get; the next
Nvidia is just about to appear.

I don't believe #2 is a non-zero probability. That's where we come in.

>Come on tho, do you honestly think that the minority linux users out
>there, who actually use their consumer power and vote with there wallets
>will even appear in the FD's reports at nVidia?

Of course. The graphics card market is incredibly cutthroat; the
companies fight for every customer they can get. Of course, if Linux
users are stupid enough to buy Nvidia cards anyway, _then_ we don't
matter.

Mac enthusiasts - a similar size group to Linux users - can keep a
complete hardware line alive; and the Linux community have
successfully fought NIC manufacturers and SCSI card manufacturers to
the point that there is no shortage of cards with open specifications
and free drivers. Why should we not do the same to 3D card vendors?

>For all the talks i've seen RMS and ESR give, for all the people that
>belive the GPL will save the world, i wish it was true.  but i'm a
>realist, closed source works for the masses. 

This would be the same kind of realist who believed that we'd never
see a complete free operating system, that a free Web server would
never be popular, that companies like IBM would never take free
software seriously, that Microsoft would never feel GNU/Linux was a
threat, etc.

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> flcl?

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