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Comment by BillyTheMage | Hacker News Reader

> you can't make an open source HDMI 2.1 driver because some people said so

I don't understand. Fuck whatever committee said whatever crap. Open source is open source. Just make the damn driver and give the suits 2 middle fingers.

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As a Member of HDMI-Forum AMD would surely break its Forum Membership contract by open-sourcing their implementation of a specification restricted to Members.

Also, "HDMI" itself is a trademark with usage only allowed to its Members (like "Wi-Fi"), so even if a non-Member would do an open-source HDMI-implementation against the will of the HDMI-Forum, he would likely not be allowed to call it "HDMI" (like "WLAN" is used by companies without Wi-Fi Alliance Membership)

That is a small hurdle. Just come up with a name. HD driver? If that is too close then something else. End of the day call it bollocks and since you are using hardware detection anyway who cares.

It would be possible to argue that both these terms are generic enough that the trademark lost its meaning, it wouldn't be the first time.

WiFi is pretty much there already

Yeah, I think someone other than them would have to write that driver. But it's possible nobody who has the freedom to do so, has the knowledge to do so.

Context: AMD is a company and those usually doesn't go around flipping the bird.

And it's a bit unfair to complain about AMD in this context anyway, not only were they the ones that proposed an Open Source Driver in the first place, from my experience their open source Linux support is excellent and in regards to flipping the bird, compared to NVIDIA they seem to do great up to date work with the Linux Kernel Devs.

This is the HDMI Group that's being Idiots in this case because the Content Mafia is afraid someone might use this to steal content. Anyway, back to torrenting stuff...

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