He's been giving the "let's talk about how to make us both happy" answers for months and months. That's not a single "no." That's not flat. What that is, is a lot of design review and "soft nos." (I do still agree that it's ammunition. People who are looking for a reason not to contribute to the kernel will have no problem using this email out of context either.)
Other than eventually "taking one for the team," caving, and merging what AMD wants, what level of support are you talking about here? As far as I can tell, your post takes the stance that a "hard no" to any patchset is going too far.
He gave them that answer 6 months ago, and they ignored it. This was not an abrupt rejection out of nowhere.
It was unreasonable then as it is now.
If I tell you "You need to rewrite your product in Brainfuck or I'll kick you out in 6 months.", the fact that I told you that doesn't make it any less insane.
To merge a driver into the kernel is to accept responsibility for maintaining it, which they recognize they are not prepared or even interested in doing.
Why is that so unreasonable?
If I recall correctly, Google tried the same thing some time ago and it didn't go well for them either.
Linux is no longer in the weak position it once was. It has won the war for server market share (at least to a degree where using it has nothing to do with being a "hippy" programmer), and it has lost the desktop war so thoroughly that at this point it really doesn't matter anymore.
In this position, Linux can live without AMD drivers, probably more so than AMD can.
Now if Linux only wants to be a server OS then that is fine but if it wants to try and grow then it does need either AMD or Nvidia. I think that for now Nvidia will continue to do what they have always done(binary blob) but if AMD gains market share by being more open then Nvidia will respond in turn.
Anyone that is serious about graphics programming is on Windows and Mac.
I learned the hard way that the way that FOSS religion and graphis programming industry don't mix (lost a few job opportunities due to that).
As for the movie industry, they basically have heavily customised GNU/Linux workstations, using the workflows they ported from SGI workstations into GNU/Linux.
(on litigation against companies that contribute)
> Anyone in the company that pushed to use Linux is now seen as "wrong" and instantly is pissed off that external people just messed up their employment future.
> - Anyone in the company that resisted the use of Linux (possibly in ways that caused the code not to be released over the objection of the previously mentioned people) are vindicated in their opinion of those "hippy"[2] programmers who develop Linux.
...
> Now, even if, after many years of work on your part, you do get that code, what is the end result? You have made an enemy for life from the people who brought Linux into the company, you have pissed off the people who didn't like Linux in the first place as they were right and yet you "defeated" them. Both of those groups of people will now work together to never use Linux again as they don't want to go through that hell again, no matter what.
(source and context: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-discuss/... )
...
I think this is the worst part of this SNAFU - Dave has just proven every naysayer in AMD right that Linux is not worth supporting. He cut away feet from the team that has supported and fought for an equivalent opensource driver support on Linux which would be released in lockstep with Windows releases. He has also proven right everyone on nVidia which has talked against opensourcing their drivers and keeping them as a horrendous binary blob. He has also pissed off his greatest ally inside AMD.
All with a single "no". Not "We can't accept this, let's talk about how to make us both happy". With that he gave new ammunition to every manager at every large hardware corporation that's fighting against opensourcing their drivers and made every Linux supporting team lead in such corporation less likely to push opensource world forward. It seems we're stuck in shitty Android kernel forks with shitty GPU binary blobs in near future, with only Windows as a proper contender for good 3D performance.
EDIT: To be clear, I'm not blaming Dave for refusing the patch for tech cases. I AM blaming him for refusing it so flatly and not actively working more with AMD to get the situation fixed. This is not a minor thing - having stable AMD drivers in kernel would really push Linux desktop forward, make sure Linux is compatible with several Macs among other machines and put pressure on nVidia to opensource theirs. But you don't get there by belittling contributors and cultivating "us vs. them" mentality.