Talk:Gallium3D

I have added this link, with useful information about Gallium 3D, but a bot has removed the link. Gallium 3D introduction

Is any problem if the link is added? --190.154.78.75 (talk) 20:31, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

As described here Gallium 3D and in other web pages, Gallium 3D will no be a replacement to Mesa 3D, or will it be a replacement? --190.10.170.17 (talk) 01:47, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Notability?

Isn't the link to the presentation at the 3rd party KDE's aKademy enough to establish notability? Diego (talk) 08:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

And there's also a talk[1] at FOSDEM. Diego (talk) 08:10, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

They should be enough, yes. Gallium3D is notable enough. --136.142.214.19 (talk) 13:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Ok - I've reviewed the sources available and they don't qualify as significant coverage (i.e. they don't "address the subject directly in detail"). I can see the potential for this library though, and the signs that it's getting traction between Open Source developers, so it might not be wise to challenge it for deletion, for a while.Diego (talk) 13:54, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, keep for the moment. Adamantios (talk) 19:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It seems that wikipedia is getting really whiney about notability. Even if the project fails, there is enough code available already to make this more than notable enough for an online encyclopedia. Even if the effort fails, I'd love to see it kept as part of the historical record. There are much less popular packages that are (and should be) mentioned by wikipedia. --208.104.220.127 (talk) 05:24, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Exactly! Adamantios (talk) 10:27, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

So how are you going to guarantee verifiability if there are no reliable sources on the subject? That's why Wikipedia requires notability, not because we're mean. -- intgr [talk] 21:04, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

You might be confounding notability and verifiability here. For the project's description to be verifiable, it only needs a link to the source code, since any assertion about what Gallium3D does can only ultimately be verified by reading the program. For other assertions about the project, the evidence is that there are third party places where the project is being discussed.

For it to be notable, OTOH, you really do need reliable sources. But if you read the notability policy guideline with care, it explicitly warns against deleting an article based on the way it currently proves its notability: "it is important to not just consider whether notability is established by the article, but whether it readily could be.[...]the discussion should focus not only on whether notability is established in the article, but on what the probability is that notability could be established".

On this premise, my reflection above was just a warning to be cautious and not too ready to deletion. It may be too soon to decide if there exist enough sources for this decision to be called now, given that the outlook seems to be changing rapidly. And a Google count is not enough to assert or deny notability - this project could be being discussed in private expert forums, and Google have not noticed about them yet. We should wait to see what do experts say about Gallium3D now that it's beginning to fall under their radar. Diego (talk) 19:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm just clarifying why Wikipedia needs a notability criteria: articles should display evidence that they could be made verifiable. Since there aren't sufficient references as of now, it wouldn't really belong to an encyclopedia. But because this is fairly certain to become notable soon, nobody is proposing it for deletion, and I doubt it would pass the deletion discussion anyway. I have seen lots of cases like this where notability-tagged articles stick around for months, before someone comes along and fixes them up. I fail to see a problem with this.

And no, source code is not a legitimate reference on Wikipedia. -- intgr [talk] 21:17, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

This article sucks

Gallium3D is not a replacement for Mesa or DRI. It is just a new internal API between Mesa and 3D DRI drivers. It is sort of an abstraction of a contemporary graphics accelerator (which is the proper way to design device drivers). This is in contrast to the old DRI design, where the 3D drivers reimplemented parts of the OpenGL pipeline again and again.

Gallium3D will make it easier for developers to write the drivers. But for end users it will be quite invisible. While it generates a lot of talk, it may be notable enough to get a section in the DRI article, but hardly notable enough to have an article of its own.