[vtkusers] ATI Petition for Adequate Drivers in Linux

[Mathieu Malaterre]

You can go there to sign it:

http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html

To:  ATI Technologies Inc.

We are the customers of ATI who use Linux to power our computers. We 
will no longer endure ATI™s poor driver support for Linux both in 32-bit 
and 64-bit computing. This petition is aimed at the designers at ATI who 
for whatever reason choose not to acknowledge our pleas and specifically 
at ATI as a company. The signers of this petition will no longer 
purchase ATI products until ATI make a workable 3D accelerated 64-bit 
driver for Linux and a 32-bit that utilizes the full potential of the 
Raedon chips.

The products we include in this are as follows:
1. All desktop Raedon chips up through 9800
2. All mobile Raedon chips up through 9800
3. All X-series chips
4. All TV and Remote Wonders
5. All FireGL chips

Also in this petition we ask ATI to change their current position on 
mobile drivers. With Linux, one of the major challenges to developers is 
to make it possible for any machine to run the operating system. To have 
every OEM develop their own drivers for each component of their machines 
and update them would be preposterous since they don’t even make the 
components. NVidia has learned this and has prospered since their 
drivers in general work with any and all notebook screens. They believe, 
and rightly so that it is the responsibility of the components 
manufacturer to create a driver that will work with every other 
component. Therefore the drivers that we ask to be created for Linux 
must also work for mobile chips.

Specifically, since 64-bit computing is new to the world, we understand 
that a rough driver that might not work perfectly is unavoidable. This 
being said we need some kind of driver no matter how rough so that we 
can utilize the chip that we have already purchased from you. Your 
current 32-bit driver for Linux is so inadequate compared to the one 
released for Windows that it performs as slow ones many generations 
older. This must be rectified.

In the event that ATI cannot handle the programming of these drivers, we 
require all modern ATI chips to be open sourced to the Linux community 
so that drivers can be made. This would include all schematics and 
technical information pertaining to the video cards produced by ATI.

Again until we see these changes, the signers of this petition cannot 
support you by purchasing any more of your products.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned