Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?

[H***@cwctv.net]

Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that steals from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL and open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the community.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

[David Schwartz]

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 03:57:06 +0000, ***@cwctv.net wrote:

To respond first to your subject, GPL'd code is given to everyone to do what
they wish with, subject to certain very specific and narrow limitations.

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that steals
from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL and open
source its work on drivers,

What type of "pact" are you talking about?

Post by H***@cwctv.net
there is a clear difference between their use of
GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do.

I presume you're talking about the inclusion of GPL'd header files into
non-GPL'd code that is then distributed without source code? IMO, if the
header file only includes things like structs and thin macros, that's
insufficient to consider the compilation a derived work.

You are welcome to argue for stronger and stronger copyright law enforcement
and narrower and narrower constructions of fair use and first sale doctrines.
However, IMO, it would be the stupidest possible thing the open source
community could ever do.

Post by H***@cwctv.net
You cannot expect embedded
kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a vain hope to grab M$
users, but in the long run it destroys the community.

I don't expect anyone to GPL unless they think they get more benefit from
GPLing than the potential harm done. People GPL code because they want to
'donate' it to improve the open source movement, community, and code base.
Attempting to arm twist such donations is worse than foolish. You think the
open source community should be a bunch of bullies? Convince people open
source is best, and avoid them if they don't agree.

DS

[Andrew Walrond]

I hate feeding lawyers
NVidia produce excellent gnu/linux/xfree drivers for their video cards,
so I buy and use their hardware. Anybody else read Peter Hamiltons
Misspent Youth yet ? Really quite interesting... But we've all done this
argument to death hundreds of times, and linux-kernel doesn't care!

While we're so off topic, Happy New Year to all fellow gnu/linux hackers!

[Xavier Bestel]

Post by Andrew Walrond
I hate feeding lawyers
NVidia produce excellent gnu/linux/xfree drivers for their video card=

s,=20

?!? Since when does NVidia produce GNU (or even GPL) drivers ? That's
very new to me, could you provide a link ?

Xav

[John Bradford]

Post by Xavier Bestel

Post by Andrew Walrond
I hate feeding lawyers
NVidia produce excellent gnu/linux/xfree drivers for their video cards,

?!? Since when does NVidia produce GNU (or even GPL) drivers ? That's
very new to me, could you provide a link ?

Are drivers for Alpha, Sparc, or anything else with a pci slot apart
from an X86 machine available?

John.

[Jochen Friedrich]

Hi John,

Post by John Bradford
Are drivers for Alpha, Sparc, or anything else with a pci slot apart
from an X86 machine available?

Unfortunately, that wouldn't be enought. There are lots of PCI graphics
cards available, which still only work in an X86 (and in most cases Alpha)
machines, although there is an open source driver. The reason is that they
need the initialisation code in their PCI BIOS, which is X86, binary code.
Alpha works around this by using an X86 emulator in their PAL code.

--jochen

[John Bradford]

Post by Jochen Friedrich

Post by John Bradford
Are drivers for Alpha, Sparc, or anything else with a pci slot apart
from an X86 machine available?

Unfortunately, that wouldn't be enought. There are lots of PCI graphics
cards available, which still only work in an X86 (and in most cases Alpha)
machines, although there is an open source driver. The reason is that they
need the initialisation code in their PCI BIOS, which is X86, binary code.

Sorry, I didn't really explain what I meant very well. I realise that
it's not just a case of getting the driver to compile on other
architectures, what I meant was that if the driver is open source then
anybody is free to work on the support for non-X86 boxes. If it's
closed source, then only the manufacturer can work on it.

Post by Jochen Friedrich
Alpha works around this by using an X86 emulator in their PAL code.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. How complete is it? Does it
just emulate a subset of X86 instructions that are enough for 90% of
initialisation code?

John.

[Måns Rullgård]

Post by John Bradford

Post by Jochen Friedrich
Alpha works around this by using an X86 emulator in their PAL code.

=20
That's interesting, I didn't know that. How complete is it? Does it
just emulate a subset of X86 instructions that are enough for 90% of
initialisation code?

AFAIK it only emulates 16-bit real mode, which is what the bios code
is. I've never seen a card that failed to work because of this.

--=20
M=E5ns Rullg=E5rd
***@users.sf.net

[Andrew Walrond]

I'll rephrase

Nvidia produce drivers *for use with* gnu/linux/xfree systems

But then you knew what I meant didn't you? Or are you a lawyer? ;)

Post by Xavier Bestel
=20

Post by Andrew Walrond
I hate feeding lawyers
NVidia produce excellent gnu/linux/xfree drivers for their video card=

s,=20

Post by Xavier Bestel
=20
=20
?!? Since when does NVidia produce GNU (or even GPL) drivers ? That's
very new to me, could you provide a link ?
=20
Xav
=20

[Andre Hedrick]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that
steals from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL
and open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between
their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot
expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a
vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the
community.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

Well let's see:

You have no money to hire lawyers.
You whine about an issue, that people with lawyers will roast you alive.

Are you a customer of Nvidia?
If you are not, you have no legal ground to invoke GPL PERIOD!
If you are a customer, check to see that they have a GPL/GNU wrapper which
is open source and attachs a clean LGPL library object, iirc.

Since, there is still a legal and valid LGPL regardless of what FSF has to
say, there are revisions of GPL which permit various usages. Now there
are people like yourself who, again have no money, have no lawyers, have
a whine, and whimpers over issues that stretch beyond the general scope.

Recall the kernel is capable of rejecting non-gpl binary modules; yet it
does not! Regardless of the original intent or scope of the "tainting
process", it created more grey than clarity.

Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.

Now what is not clear?

If the kernel forces vendors to choose between closed source support or
loose the competive edge in their market space, enjoy hunting for the old
dusty video cards from the past. You just limited the scope of hardware
which will run on Linux with any usability.

Now given the kernel is now so well mixed between people in the past,
current, and dead developers (sigh Leonard Z :-(( ), how are you going to
hurd all togather to agree on a single point?

So you submitted a patch, whippty flip ... neither you or I control the
license of the kernel. If Linus does not like the content of a patch or a
file generated, well it is toast. Also where does it state a patch is
defined as "GPL patch"?

Think a little harder first, cause I and many others will be on the side
of slapping down your arguements about preventing binary modules from
being loaded. Key point! "LOADED" not "LINKED". For the meatballs who
think that dumping /proc/kcore is an effective way of generating a newly
linked file, remember you created the file, not the owners of the module.

Prove you can boot a cat /proc/kcore > vmlinux and you have now linked a
closed source object with an open source kernel. Using your logic from
above, you are now the offending person to GPL. You committed the act of
linking the two permanetly.

Time for bed, ranting is over ...

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[Mark Rutherford]

I doubt this would 'destroy the community'...
Do I like it? Nope.
But here is the way I look at it...
Nvidia provides the driver, and it works. it means I can use their cards in
Linux.
the Linux drivers, are in my opinion far more superior than the Window$
drivers.
After all, you do get the kernel module source code....
Another thing you must realise is that these companies want to stay in
buisness and
just the fact that Nvidia has a linux driver probably torques m$ off as it is
they do not want to upset this company, lets face it, they are barbaric and
they are cabable of
bringing hardware makers to their knees if they wanted to.
They even have a *BSD driver now....
I like Nvidia, because they provide me with a driver that I can use, and it
works.
I also recall reading that they have code in their driver(s) that belongs to a
third party, making it
hard to release the source to the driver without upsetting the third party.
perhaps one day, they will be able to.
I dont think we should fault them, at least they give us something, we need to
focus on the companies that
give us NOTHING.

end of rant :)

Post by Andre Hedrick

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that
steals from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL
and open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between
their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot
expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a
vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the
community.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

You have no money to hire lawyers.
You whine about an issue, that people with lawyers will roast you alive.
Are you a customer of Nvidia?
If you are not, you have no legal ground to invoke GPL PERIOD!
If you are a customer, check to see that they have a GPL/GNU wrapper which
is open source and attachs a clean LGPL library object, iirc.
Since, there is still a legal and valid LGPL regardless of what FSF has to
say, there are revisions of GPL which permit various usages. Now there
are people like yourself who, again have no money, have no lawyers, have
a whine, and whimpers over issues that stretch beyond the general scope.
Recall the kernel is capable of rejecting non-gpl binary modules; yet it
does not! Regardless of the original intent or scope of the "tainting
process", it created more grey than clarity.
Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.
Now what is not clear?
If the kernel forces vendors to choose between closed source support or
loose the competive edge in their market space, enjoy hunting for the old
dusty video cards from the past. You just limited the scope of hardware
which will run on Linux with any usability.
Now given the kernel is now so well mixed between people in the past,
current, and dead developers (sigh Leonard Z :-(( ), how are you going to
hurd all togather to agree on a single point?
So you submitted a patch, whippty flip ... neither you or I control the
license of the kernel. If Linus does not like the content of a patch or a
file generated, well it is toast. Also where does it state a patch is
defined as "GPL patch"?
Think a little harder first, cause I and many others will be on the side
of slapping down your arguements about preventing binary modules from
being loaded. Key point! "LOADED" not "LINKED". For the meatballs who
think that dumping /proc/kcore is an effective way of generating a newly
linked file, remember you created the file, not the owners of the module.
Prove you can boot a cat /proc/kcore > vmlinux and you have now linked a
closed source object with an open source kernel. Using your logic from
above, you are now the offending person to GPL. You committed the act of
linking the two permanetly.
Time for bed, ranting is over ...
Cheers,
Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

--
Regards,
Mark Rutherford
***@justirc.net

[Paul Jakma]

Post by Mark Rutherford
the Linux drivers, are in my opinion far more superior than the Window$
drivers.
After all, you do get the kernel module source code....

No you do not.

You get source to the code that shims a big binary object file into
whatever kernel you compile against.

Post by Mark Rutherford
I dont think we should fault them, at least they give us something,
we need to focus on the companies that give us NOTHING.

they havnt given us anything.

Post by Mark Rutherford
end of rant :)

regards,

[Mark Rutherford]

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by Mark Rutherford
the Linux drivers, are in my opinion far more superior than the Window$
drivers.
After all, you do get the kernel module source code....

No you do not.
You get source to the code that shims a big binary object file into
whatever kernel you compile against.

I stand corrected here... (silence)

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by Mark Rutherford
I dont think we should fault them, at least they give us something,
we need to focus on the companies that give us NOTHING.

they havnt given us anything.

well, change 'us' to 'Linux users'
why? well we can use our expensive hardware.
to some, thats all that matters.
personally, I would like to see the code :)

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by Mark Rutherford
end of rant :)

regards,
--
Paul Jakma Sys Admin Alphyra
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

--
Regards,
Mark Rutherford
***@justirc.net

[Paul Jakma]

Post by Mark Rutherford
well, change 'us' to 'Linux users'
why? well we can use our expensive hardware.

"what you get for christmas?"

"a lump of coal"

at least you get /something/. however, you didnt get what counts,
programming info for the card.

PS: do you think Linux PPC or Alpha users are happy that NVidia
provide drivers?

Post by Mark Rutherford
to some, thats all that matters.
personally, I would like to see the code :)

regards,

[Scott Robert Ladd]

Post by Paul Jakma
"what you get for christmas?"
"a lump of coal"
at least you get /something/. however, you didnt get what counts,
programming info for the card.

I, and many other Linux users, do not consider nVidia's drivers to be "a
lump of coal." What "counts" is being able to use my hardware effectively.
Closed-source drivers may not be ideal, but few things in life are.

Even the conservative Debian distribution (which I use) has the nVidia
drivers available in the distribution.

In order of preference (for me):

1) High-quality drivers with open source
2) High-quality drivers with closed source
3) Poor-quality drivers with open source
4) Poor-quality drivers with closed source

Out of four possibilities, we're getting the next-to-best thing. Certainly,
I'd *like* to have the specs for nVidia's cards -- but given competition
between nVidia and ATI, I don't see that happening. One advantage nVidia has
(small as it may be) is high-quality drivers for Linux; it's one reason my
Linux systems have TNT2 and GeForce 4 cards installed.

Note that my Windows boxes run ATI cards; I'm not an nVidia shill.

One of Linux's historical weaknesses (when compared to the competition) is
video support. While I urge nVidia to open their specifications (and in the
end think it would be in their best interest), I'm also very pleased that
they provide high-performance drivers for free (as in beer).

..Scott

--
Scott Robert Ladd
Coyote Gulch Productions (http://www.coyotegulch.com)
Professional programming for science and engineering;
Interesting and unusual bits of very free code.

[Måns Rullgård]

Post by Paul Jakma
PS: do you think Linux PPC or Alpha users are happy that NVidia
provide drivers?

Being an Alpha user, I can assure you that for me nvidia's drivers are
worth nothing. Even if they did work, I would want the complete specs
for the chip. There's usually something you can do with them.

--=20
M=E5ns Rullg=E5rd
***@users.sf.net

[David Schwartz]

Post by Andre Hedrick
Recall the kernel is capable of rejecting non-gpl binary modules; yet it
does not! Regardless of the original intent or scope of the "tainting
process", it created more grey than clarity.

Nothing would stop someone from distributing a kernel that did not reject
those drivers. The GPL doesn't permit you to add additional restrictions to
it, so you can't add a clause prohibiting such distribution.

Post by Andre Hedrick
Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.

There would just be a set of patches to bypass that rejection. Every major
distribution would distribute kernels with those patches. You can't GPL code
and at the same time control how it is used.

As I argued in my previous post, it would be suicidal for any advocate of
open source to attempt to broaden the scope of what constitutes a 'derived
work' or narrow the scope of fair use or first sale type doctrines.

Hey, we're almost back on topic for this list. Happy new year.

DS

[Krzysztof Halasa]

Post by Andre Hedrick
Are you a customer of Nvidia?
If you are not, you have no legal ground to invoke GPL PERIOD!

Which country has such weird copyright laws?

Post by Andre Hedrick
If you are a customer, check to see that they have a GPL/GNU wrapper which
is open source and attachs a clean LGPL library object, iirc.

I don't think we have LGPL code in the kernel, but of course I can be
wrong here.
Anyway, NVidia has binary driver being a kernel component and XFree86
driver. While XFree86 driver may or may not be subject to X11 license,
the kernel part (an object file which is then linked to a kernel module
glue code) does not seem to be derived from kernel code.

Post by Andre Hedrick
Since, there is still a legal and valid LGPL regardless of what FSF has to
say, there are revisions of GPL which permit various usages.

Still, LGPL has nothing to do with it. The kernel code is licensed
under version 2 of GPL (or maybe later version, but there isn't any).

Having or not having money has nothing to do with it either.

Post by Andre Hedrick
Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.

Kernel behaviour is not related to legal issues.

Post by Andre Hedrick
If the kernel forces vendors to choose between closed source support or
loose the competive edge in their market space, enjoy hunting for the old
dusty video cards from the past. You just limited the scope of hardware
which will run on Linux with any usability.

Forget it. The kernel itselt can't force anyone to do anything. That is
the license that matters.
BTW: Of course, vendors are free to produce drivers for their hardware.
Have you seen such a closed-source driver which was working correctly?
I haven't.

Post by Andre Hedrick
So you submitted a patch, whippty flip ... neither you or I control the
license of the kernel. If Linus does not like the content of a patch or a
file generated, well it is toast. Also where does it state a patch is
defined as "GPL patch"?

IANAL, but I'd assume a patch doesn't change the license for a product
(a file etc), unless stated otherwise.

Post by Andre Hedrick
Think a little harder first, cause I and many others will be on the side
of slapping down your arguements about preventing binary modules from
being loaded. Key point! "LOADED" not "LINKED".

A module has to be linked when it's loaded. But it, of course, doesn't
matter - the GPL doesn't prevent you from linking GPL code to anything
you want, unless you want to distribute such a beast.

[Bill Davidsen]

Post by David Schwartz
I don't expect anyone to GPL unless they think they get more benefit from
GPLing than the potential harm done. People GPL code because they want to
'donate' it to improve the open source movement, community, and code base.
Attempting to arm twist such donations is worse than foolish. You think the
open source community should be a bunch of bullies? Convince people open
source is best, and avoid them if they don't agree.

Certainly anyone who has had a problem, posted an oops, and been told that
no one will even look at a dump from a system with the nvidia driver might
think they were being bullied...

[David Schwartz]

Post by Bill Davidsen

II don't expect anyone to GPL unless they think they get more benefit
from
GPLing than the potential harm done. People GPL code because they want to
'donate' it to improve the open source movement, community, and code base.
Attempting to arm twist such donations is worse than foolish. You think the
open source community should be a bunch of bullies? Convince people open
source is best, and avoid them if they don't agree.

Certainly anyone who has had a problem, posted an oops, and been told that
no one will even look at a dump from a system with the nvidia driver might
think they were being bullied...

There's a difference between people thinking they are being bullied and
being a bunch of bullies. ;)

I would hope that the situation would be explained politely -- kind of like
this: "Unfortunately, with closed-source software, only someone who has the
source code can debug it. If you can replicate the problem without any
closed-source drivers, we'll do our best to help you. But if you can only
replicate the problem with a closed-source module installed, odds are the
problem is in that module, and even if it wasn't, we couldn't track it down."

That doesn't really seem like bullying and helps to clarify the
disadvantages of using closed-source software.

DS

[Roberto Peon]

Yea, I'm happy I can use my NVidia hardware with linux-x86, however I have no chance of adding render-to-texture support or various other extensions that would make MY life a heck of a lot easier in the longrun. Note that all of those WGL extensions are NOT supported under linux, and somehow, the seem pretty dang important.

On that note, NVidia hasn't done -nothing- as I've heard some people suggest. They havn't even done nothing for the open source community.

They've made their hardware run on many/most current versions of linux-x86. This encourages more end-user class people with NVidia hardware to use linux. Depending on who you are and what your goals are (i.e. world domination?) this may be a good thing for the community.

I really hate it when people have a knee-jerk reaction to providing binary-only support one way or the other.

There are obvious disadvantages to a binary-only driver/distribution, however you shouldn't overlook that the fact that it works it all is important too! (And yea, I'd like to have the source open too, That should be apparant from my first paragraph)



-Roberto JP
***@sportvision.com


---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
From: Mark Rutherford <***@justirc.net>
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 08:49:49 -0500

Post by Mark Rutherford
I doubt this would 'destroy the community'...
Do I like it? Nope.
But here is the way I look at it...
Nvidia provides the driver, and it works. it means I can use their cards in
Linux.
the Linux drivers, are in my opinion far more superior than the Window$
drivers.
After all, you do get the kernel module source code....
Another thing you must realise is that these companies want to stay in
buisness and
just the fact that Nvidia has a linux driver probably torques m$ off as it is
they do not want to upset this company, lets face it, they are barbaric and
they are cabable of
bringing hardware makers to their knees if they wanted to.
They even have a *BSD driver now....
I like Nvidia, because they provide me with a driver that I can use, and it
works.
I also recall reading that they have code in their driver(s) that belongs to a
third party, making it
hard to release the source to the driver without upsetting the third party.
perhaps one day, they will be able to.
I dont think we should fault them, at least they give us something, we need to
focus on the companies that
give us NOTHING.
end of rant :)

Post by Andre Hedrick

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that
steals from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL
and open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between
their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot
expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a
vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the
community.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

You have no money to hire lawyers.
You whine about an issue, that people with lawyers will roast you alive.
Are you a customer of Nvidia?
If you are not, you have no legal ground to invoke GPL PERIOD!
If you are a customer, check to see that they have a GPL/GNU wrapper which
is open source and attachs a clean LGPL library object, iirc.
Since, there is still a legal and valid LGPL regardless of what FSF has to
say, there are revisions of GPL which permit various usages. Now there
are people like yourself who, again have no money, have no lawyers, have
a whine, and whimpers over issues that stretch beyond the general scope.
Recall the kernel is capable of rejecting non-gpl binary modules; yet it
does not! Regardless of the original intent or scope of the "tainting
process", it created more grey than clarity.
Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.
Now what is not clear?
If the kernel forces vendors to choose between closed source support or
loose the competive edge in their market space, enjoy hunting for the old
dusty video cards from the past. You just limited the scope of hardware
which will run on Linux with any usability.
Now given the kernel is now so well mixed between people in the past,
current, and dead developers (sigh Leonard Z :-(( ), how are you going to
hurd all togather to agree on a single point?
So you submitted a patch, whippty flip ... neither you or I control the
license of the kernel. If Linus does not like the content of a patch or a
file generated, well it is toast. Also where does it state a patch is
defined as "GPL patch"?
Think a little harder first, cause I and many others will be on the side
of slapping down your arguements about preventing binary modules from
being loaded. Key point! "LOADED" not "LINKED". For the meatballs who
think that dumping /proc/kcore is an effective way of generating a newly
linked file, remember you created the file, not the owners of the module.
Prove you can boot a cat /proc/kcore > vmlinux and you have now linked a
closed source object with an open source kernel. Using your logic from
above, you are now the offending person to GPL. You committed the act of
linking the two permanetly.
Time for bed, ranting is over ...
Cheers,
Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

--
Regards,
Mark Rutherford
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

[Ralf Hildebrandt]

* Dan Egli <***@shortcircuit.dyndns.org>:

Thanks for the fullquote

I don't think there is a person on this listt that would not prefer to
have the source to the nVidia drivers. I know I would. However, I also
know that releasing the complete spec to their GPU would be suicide
because, as has been pointed out earlier, ATI could get ahold of the
information and use it to exploit any weakness in nVidia's GPU. Plus
they could start to incorporate nVidia's instructions into THEIR GPUs
and boom. ATI releases a card that has all of their features, plus does
99.5% of what an nVidia card does also. Responce from the computer

If ATI's so keen on having that data, they would be reverse
engineering nvidia's drivers.

[Dan Egli]

Post by Roberto Peon
Yea, I'm happy I can use my NVidia hardware with linux-x86, however I have no chance of adding render-to-texture support or various other extensions that would make MY life a heck of a lot easier in the longrun. Note that all of those WGL extensions are NOT supported under linux, and somehow, the seem pretty dang important.
On that note, NVidia hasn't done -nothing- as I've heard some people suggest. They havn't even done nothing for the open source community.
They've made their hardware run on many/most current versions of linux-x86. This encourages more end-user class people with NVidia hardware to use linux. Depending on who you are and what your goals are (i.e. world domination?) this may be a good thing for the community.
I really hate it when people have a knee-jerk reaction to providing binary-only support one way or the other.
There are obvious disadvantages to a binary-only driver/distribution, however you shouldn't overlook that the fact that it works it all is important too! (And yea, I'd like to have the source open too, That should be apparant from my first paragraph)
-Roberto JP
---------- Original Message ----------------------------------
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 08:49:49 -0500

Post by Mark Rutherford
I doubt this would 'destroy the community'...
Do I like it? Nope.
But here is the way I look at it...
Nvidia provides the driver, and it works. it means I can use their cards in
Linux.
the Linux drivers, are in my opinion far more superior than the Window$
drivers.
After all, you do get the kernel module source code....
Another thing you must realise is that these companies want to stay in
buisness and
just the fact that Nvidia has a linux driver probably torques m$ off as it is
they do not want to upset this company, lets face it, they are barbaric and
they are cabable of
bringing hardware makers to their knees if they wanted to.
They even have a *BSD driver now....
I like Nvidia, because they provide me with a driver that I can use, and it
works.
I also recall reading that they have code in their driver(s) that belongs to a
third party, making it
hard to release the source to the driver without upsetting the third party.
perhaps one day, they will be able to.
I dont think we should fault them, at least they give us something, we need to
focus on the companies that
give us NOTHING.
end of rant :)

Post by Andre Hedrick

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that
steals from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL
and open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between
their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot
expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a
vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the
community.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

You have no money to hire lawyers.
You whine about an issue, that people with lawyers will roast you alive.
Are you a customer of Nvidia?
If you are not, you have no legal ground to invoke GPL PERIOD!
If you are a customer, check to see that they have a GPL/GNU wrapper which
is open source and attachs a clean LGPL library object, iirc.
Since, there is still a legal and valid LGPL regardless of what FSF has to
say, there are revisions of GPL which permit various usages. Now there
are people like yourself who, again have no money, have no lawyers, have
a whine, and whimpers over issues that stretch beyond the general scope.
Recall the kernel is capable of rejecting non-gpl binary modules; yet it
does not! Regardless of the original intent or scope of the "tainting
process", it created more grey than clarity.
Now until the kernel forcable rejects loading binary closed source
modules, it defaults to quietly approved of the concept regardless what
you think, feel, or care.
Now what is not clear?
If the kernel forces vendors to choose between closed source support or
loose the competive edge in their market space, enjoy hunting for the old
dusty video cards from the past. You just limited the scope of hardware
which will run on Linux with any usability.
Now given the kernel is now so well mixed between people in the past,
current, and dead developers (sigh Leonard Z :-(( ), how are you going to
hurd all togather to agree on a single point?
So you submitted a patch, whippty flip ... neither you or I control the
license of the kernel. If Linus does not like the content of a patch or a
file generated, well it is toast. Also where does it state a patch is
defined as "GPL patch"?
Think a little harder first, cause I and many others will be on the side
of slapping down your arguements about preventing binary modules from
being loaded. Key point! "LOADED" not "LINKED". For the meatballs who
think that dumping /proc/kcore is an effective way of generating a newly
linked file, remember you created the file, not the owners of the module.
Prove you can boot a cat /proc/kcore > vmlinux and you have now linked a
closed source object with an open source kernel. Using your logic from
above, you are now the offending person to GPL. You committed the act of
linking the two permanetly.
Time for bed, ranting is over ...
Cheers,
Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group
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Regards,
Mark Rutherford
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Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/

<lurk mode off>
<Soap Box On>
I don't think there is a person on this listt that would not prefer to
have the source to the nVidia drivers. I know I would. However, I also
know that releasing the complete spec to their GPU would be suicide
because, as has been pointed out earlier, ATI could get ahold of the
information and use it to exploit any weakness in nVidia's GPU. Plus
they could start to incorporate nVidia's instructions into THEIR GPUs
and boom. ATI releases a card that has all of their features, plus does
99.5% of what an nVidia card does also. Responce from the computer
community: Why buy a nVidia card when ATI's cards do the same thing and
more. Result: nVidia folds and goes out of business. Not a favorable
result IMHO. Would I like to see the code to the driver? YES. Do I
consider it a major slap in the face that I cannot see it? Absolutely
NOT. nVidia's drivers, while closed source, do work VERY well. I use
nVidia cards in all my machines (except one machine that is soo old it
doesn't have an AGP port, so I use an old Matrox Millenium in that box).
I'm an open source advocate. I like seeing things open source. But I
also realise that this is not a realistic goal for many companies in the
current state of the world.
<Soap Box Off>
<lurk mode on>

--- Dan

[H***@cwctv.net]

If i was a "bully" I would be getting what I want... Could this be corporate manipulation, now I know how apple feels.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 11:11:18 -0800 David Schwartz <***@webmaster.com> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

no Nvidias drivers arent like coal because coal is useful for fires, what happens when Nvidia decide those cards are too old? But just new enough to not show the competition their code, Nvidia are a drain on the community with nothing useful to show for it.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 12:05:35 -0500 "Scott Robert Ladd" <***@coyotegulch.com> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
no Nvidias drivers arent like coal because coal is useful for fires, what
happens when Nvidia decide those cards are too old? But just new enough
to not show the competition their code, Nvidia are a drain on the community
with nothing useful to show for it.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

Then why complain about it? Don't buy NVidia cards! if you don't like
what they're doing with the code and the drivers, don't buy or use their
product. Simple as that. There's always ATI, SiS, and many other cards with
fully GPL coded drivers for it. Just because one may think that NVidia is the
best card out on the market, doesn't mean (unfortunately) they have to
accomodate every OS that uses it, and do it the same way that every other
company does. You have a choice, but also, so do they.

I have an SiS 315E card in my box, and it works great, and haven't
looked at any other card since installing it.

BL.

[Ed Sweetman]

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto

Post by H***@cwctv.net
no Nvidias drivers arent like coal because coal is useful for fires, what
happens when Nvidia decide those cards are too old? But just new enough
to not show the competition their code, Nvidia are a drain on the community
with nothing useful to show for it.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

Then why complain about it? Don't buy NVidia cards! if you don't like
what they're doing with the code and the drivers, don't buy or use their
product. Simple as that. There's always ATI, SiS, and many other cards with
fully GPL coded drivers for it. Just because one may think that NVidia is the
best card out on the market, doesn't mean (unfortunately) they have to
accomodate every OS that uses it, and do it the same way that every other
company does. You have a choice, but also, so do they.
I have an SiS 315E card in my box, and it works great, and haven't
looked at any other card since installing it.
BL.

Note: "you" is everyone complaining about nvidia not gpl'ing their drivers.

Gotta agree with that. You get along much better in life not believing
you deserve this and that. Nobody owes you driver support because they
make hardware. And bullying companies to do so makes you no better than
they are when they bully other companies out of business, buy them out
and use their advanced ideas in their crappy products.


Apparently nvidia is the graphics leader because people dont know how to
write accelerated graphics code for nvidia chipsets. And apparently it
has little to do with engineering the card and chips and manufacturing
those pieces and assembling them. And apparently they're better
protected by software laws from someone stealing their hard work and
making products without having to spend R&D on it than laws on copying
various hardware patents and such.

going to a company and telling them they have to agree with your beliefs
is a quick way to get absolutely nothing. Nvidia has survived before
linux became the big deal on wallstreet and news. They can survive quite
well with windows users alone. They dont need linux user support. So
how is trying to boycott nvidia products up in anger and sending angry
emails going to help you get what you want? You dont have the market
power needed to make that work. It just makes companies see linux as a
bunch of spoiled brats complaining when they dont get what they want and
throwing a tantrum.

We allow certain binary-only modules in the linux kernel. That has been
long established and it's the end of the story. This is brought up
like every year and it ends the same way. You dont like what nvidia does
then dont buy their stuff, but going around and trying to tell other
people to do so is counterproductive and foolish. We dont have the
leverage and pretending you do makes every step closer we were to
gaining support inside nvidia turn into a step backwards. Why should
they give their drivers away gpl? What is the gain in that? Show them
the gain and hope they come around.

What are their motives in not going gpl? has anyone asked them that?
People assume it's out of security for their product but there is no
precident for them to be worried about that and it sounds silly.

If you are bothered by the license the drivers you use are under then
why did you buy nvidia in the first place? I always buy my hardware
based on linux support. If i had hardware that wasn't well supported or
needed special binary modules i'd trade it with a friend or sell it on
ebay and get something that didn't. With a new nvidia card you cant go
saying you're too poor to get anything else. So you get a piece of
hardware that you know is not supported by gpl drivers well and then
complain about it?

There is always the old way of reverse engineering the hardware and
continuing the gpl nvidia driver support. It's much harder but it's
still done. The need for gpl support must not be that high to get people
motivated to dive into that mess yet so I dont see much motivation on
nvidia's side to change how they do things.

ok. dead horse 0 people 1. no doubt a rematch will proceed.

[J Sloan]

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto
I have an SiS 315E card in my box, and it works great, and haven't
looked at any other card since installing it.

Yeah but I can play quake 3 arena, unreal tournament,
and return to castle wolfenstein with my nvidia card,
and you can't do that with your sis card.

Good binary 3D drivers are way better than no 3D
drivers -

A microsoft-free 3D fps addict,

Joe

[Erik Andersen]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
no Nvidias drivers arent like coal because coal is useful for fires,

Nvidia cards are also quite useful for fires. Just take
off the heat sink. ;-)

-Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

[H***@cwctv.net]

read up on why the GPL exists, its not to protect a billion dollar company, its to protect honest contributors from having their work stolen by big buisness like just what happened when Nvidia used various GPLd HEADER FILES IN ITS MODULES AND KEPT SOURCE CLOSED. by "DEAD HORSE".

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:48:44 -0500 Ed Sweetman <***@wmich.edu> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

First off, could you please your MUA to use 80 columns? having to
manually put in carriage returns to read your mail gets rather tedious...

Post by H***@cwctv.net
read up on why the GPL exists, its not to protect a billion dollar

company, its to protect honest contributors from having their work stolen
by big buisness like just what happened when Nvidia used various GPLd
HEADER FILES IN ITS MODULES AND KEPT SOURCE CLOSED. by "DEAD HORSE".

I know why the GPL exists.. however, that does not mean or indicate
that a company could not use the GPL for their own reasons. They a) wrote
their own code, b) may have used headers that were GPL'ed, but does not mean
or insinuate that just because they use GPL'd headers that they must have
their SOURCE open. Many companies use GPL'd material, for their own purposes,
and not have to have their own personal source open. You may want to read into
the actual documentation for the GPL and LGPL.

Besides.. Who is an honest contributor who worked on NVidia's own
module? Did anyone outside NVidia write it? no. NVidia wrote it, NVidia
released it, it's NVidia's IP. you're confusing Headers with the actual code.

Like Snoop Dogg said. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

BL.

Post by H***@cwctv.net
(authenticated bits=0)
by smtp.wmich.edu (8.1336/8.12.4) with ESMTP id h014mi8l003760;
Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:48:45 -0500 (EST)
Date: Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:48:44 -0500
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021218
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto

Post by H***@cwctv.net
no Nvidias drivers arent like coal because coal is useful for fires, what
happens when Nvidia decide those cards are too old? But just new enough
to not show the competition their code, Nvidia are a drain on the
community with nothing useful to show for it.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

Then why complain about it? Don't buy NVidia cards! if you don't
like what they're doing with the code and the drivers, don't buy or use
their product. Simple as that. There's always ATI, SiS, and many other
cards with fully GPL coded drivers for it. Just because one may think that
NVidia is the best card out on the market, doesn't mean (unfortunately)
they have to accomodate every OS that uses it, and do it the same way that
every other company does. You have a choice, but also, so do they.
I have an SiS 315E card in my box, and it works great, and haven't
looked at any other card since installing it.
BL.

Note: "you" is everyone complaining about nvidia not gpl'ing their drivers.
Gotta agree with that. You get along much better in life not believing
you deserve this and that. Nobody owes you driver support because they
make hardware. And bullying companies to do so makes you no better than
they are when they bully other companies out of business, buy them out
and use their advanced ideas in their crappy products.
Apparently nvidia is the graphics leader because people dont know how to
write accelerated graphics code for nvidia chipsets. And apparently it
has little to do with engineering the card and chips and manufacturing
those pieces and assembling them. And apparently they're better
protected by software laws from someone stealing their hard work and
making products without having to spend R&D on it than laws on copying
various hardware patents and such.
going to a company and telling them they have to agree with your beliefs
is a quick way to get absolutely nothing. Nvidia has survived before
linux became the big deal on wallstreet and news. They can survive quite
well with windows users alone. They dont need linux user support. So
how is trying to boycott nvidia products up in anger and sending angry
emails going to help you get what you want? You dont have the market
power needed to make that work. It just makes companies see linux as a
bunch of spoiled brats complaining when they dont get what they want and
throwing a tantrum.
We allow certain binary-only modules in the linux kernel. That has been
long established and it's the end of the story. This is brought up
like every year and it ends the same way. You dont like what nvidia does
then dont buy their stuff, but going around and trying to tell other
people to do so is counterproductive and foolish. We dont have the
leverage and pretending you do makes every step closer we were to
gaining support inside nvidia turn into a step backwards. Why should
they give their drivers away gpl? What is the gain in that? Show them
the gain and hope they come around.
What are their motives in not going gpl? has anyone asked them that?
People assume it's out of security for their product but there is no
precident for them to be worried about that and it sounds silly.
If you are bothered by the license the drivers you use are under then
why did you buy nvidia in the first place? I always buy my hardware
based on linux support. If i had hardware that wasn't well supported or
needed special binary modules i'd trade it with a friend or sell it on
ebay and get something that didn't. With a new nvidia card you cant go
saying you're too poor to get anything else. So you get a piece of
hardware that you know is not supported by gpl drivers well and then
complain about it?
There is always the old way of reverse engineering the hardware and
continuing the gpl nvidia driver support. It's much harder but it's
still done. The need for gpl support must not be that high to get people
motivated to dive into that mess yet so I dont see much motivation on
nvidia's side to change how they do things.
ok. dead horse 0 people 1. no doubt a rematch will proceed.

[Andre Hedrick]

Tyketto !!!!

AMEN !!!!

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto
First off, could you please your MUA to use 80 columns? having to
manually put in carriage returns to read your mail gets rather tedious...

<snip>

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto
I know why the GPL exists.. however, that does not mean or indicate
their own code, b) may have used headers that were GPL'ed, but does not mean
or insinuate that just because they use GPL'd headers that they must have
their SOURCE open. Many companies use GPL'd material, for their own purposes,
and not have to have their own personal source open. You may want to read into
the actual documentation for the GPL and LGPL.
Besides.. Who is an honest contributor who worked on NVidia's own
module? Did anyone outside NVidia write it? no. NVidia wrote it, NVidia
released it, it's NVidia's IP. you're confusing Headers with the actual code.
Like Snoop Dogg said. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

[jw schultz]

Post by Andre Hedrick
Tyketto !!!!
AMEN !!!!
Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

Post by A Guy Called Tyketto
First off, could you please your MUA to use 80 columns? having to
manually put in carriage returns to read your mail gets rather tedious...

We've already done the rounds on his choice of low-priority
emailer regarding long lines (no <enter> key; yet somehow he
can start a new paragraph) and broken threads. He said
earlier in the (broken by him) thread that these messages
of his aren't worth paying for bandwidth.

I'm not a big fan of kill-files but...

:0
* ^X-Mailer: Liberate TVMail
/dev/null

[H***@cwctv.net]

AND NOBODY HAS TO BEG ANYTHING FROM NVIDIA, OR GAIN THEIR SUPPORT, not for their price, the GPLs SOUL PURPOSE.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 05:01:12 +0000 <***@cwctv.net> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
AND NOBODY HAS TO BEG ANYTHING FROM NVIDIA, OR GAIN THEIR SUPPORT, not for their price, the GPLs SOUL PURPOSE.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

One other thing. No-one GAVE NVidia GPL'd material. It's available for
them to use it, just like it is for us. If you have a problem with that, you
may want to take it up with GNU, the FSF, and RMS, if you want to deal with
all the slack. But that's your fight, not ours.

BL.

[H***@cwctv.net]

They are stealing by changing GPL files, and not giving the source, its not for personal use so they are DISTRIBUTING it, and INCLUDING IT. BUT they dont give out their DERIVED source. I work with C everyday and when you put in a header file you are including it, all kernel headers are GPL. I read the license 4 times a day and have since 1995.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 21:13:42 -0800 A Guy Called Tyketto <***@wizard.com> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
They are stealing by changing GPL files, and not giving the source, its

And just how the smeg do you KNOW they're CHANGING these files, aye?
Do you have some super secret K-9 nose that the rest of us don't, and can
tell? Have you reverse engineered the binary to see? Please, enlighten us.

not for personal use so they are DISTRIBUTING it, and INCLUDING IT.

This does not make sense. You're saying they're changing GPL'd files,
though they can use them any way they choose, as long as they notify the
original author of the changes they made. Whether they redistribute the CODE,
is up to them. They chose not to. As long as they have notified those who
wrote the headers, no GPL violation has been made.

BUT they dont give out their DERIVED source.

Once again, there is no clause in the GPL that states they MUST give
out the code. All they need to do is notify the author. Also, They MUST give
out the code, if they've MODIFIED the headers. You'd be stewing and eating
your boots for dinner if NVidia released the code, and you found no headers to
be modified. their code, they can do anything they want. But for the headers,
all they'd need to do for changing their code, is to keep a current version of
the headers from the kernel, and program their C code to their content. Once
again, No. GPL. Violation.

I work with C everyday and when you put in a header file you are including it,
all kernel headers are GPL. I read the license 4 times a day and have
since 1995.

And we don't deal with C at all. The kernel is programmed in COBOL,
ADA, Modula-2, Mumps, and Pick. Hell, I just might port it part of it over to
Logo. Oh damn.. Apple will sue me for that.. Let's port it to C! I'll learn
it, with my trusty Visual C, and Borland C compilers! </sarcasm>

BL.

[Andre Hedrick]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
They are stealing by changing GPL files, and not giving the source, its

Before you call Nvidia a "THEIF", look in the mirror and read the legal
license associated with the drivers you have, and you do not have
hardware.

http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=legal_info

The attached EULA is what you forgot to read, or maybe forgot understand.

International Offices
England:
Theale Court, 11-13 High Street
Theale, Reading, Berkshire, RG7
5AH
England
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
not for personal use so they are DISTRIBUTING it, and INCLUDING IT. BUT
they dont give out their DERIVED source. I work with C everyday and when
you put in a header file you are including it, all kernel headers are

Well recall you said it was time for you to consult your
"lawyer"/"solicitor", well lets see if I can help you do it faster.
I am tired of your rants about NVIDIA and the commerial viability of
binary library objects with public source wrappers.

With any luck you can be the person to win or loose the case and make GPL
viable or not.

Are you willing to take the risk?

Regards,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[H***@cwctv.net]

I use a radeon, with open source 3d, if i want i can pay for closed source ones, its a better way to work as my card has constantly tweaked 3d drivers for every kernel.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 21:17:10 -0800 J Sloan <***@tmsusa.com> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

It matters not whether it was gave or taken, GPL=GPL either way, I shall contact MR. Stallman, as and when I get some legal advice, I AM DEFENDING THE GPL, YOU ARE BULLYING, SUBVERTING AND TWISTING THE GPL. I am a staunch advocate of the FSF.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 21:15:18 -0800 A Guy Called Tyketto <***@wizard.com> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
It matters not whether it was gave or taken, GPL=GPL either way, I shall contact MR. Stallman, as and when I get some legal advice, I AM DEFENDING THE GPL, YOU ARE BULLYING, SUBVERTING AND TWISTING THE GPL. I am a staunch advocate of the FSF.

Good luck! Tell RMS he still owes me dinner, and be sure to bring a
video camera along with you! You just might win $10,000 for it, on America's
Funniest Home Videos! ;)

BL.

[H***@cwctv.net]

You must understand the GNU/LINUX community is being manipulated by NVidia.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Mon, 30 Dec 2002 22:55:35 -0800 David Schwartz <***@webmaster.com> wrote:

[David Lang]

It's obvious that you are not going to listen to anyone who disagrees with
you so would you please stop filling our mailboxes?

This is not a new discussion. In past discussions it has been decided that
just including header files is not enough to make something a derived
work. you don't agree with that so you are going to go make a pest of
yourself. spare us the further e-mail.

Linus made a statement in the last couple of months about binary-only
modules for the kernel. please go read that before you go further.

David Lang

Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2003 05:51:28 +0000
Subject: RE:Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source
drivers?
You must understand the GNU/LINUX community is being manipulated by NVidia.
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

[Andre Hedrick]

Hell.Surfers,

Post by H***@cwctv.net
You must understand the GNU/LINUX community is being manipulated by NVidia.

NVIDIA Corporate Office:
2701 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95050
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
***@nvidia.com
Directions to Corporate Office

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

GO FOR IT!

I will love to see the fall out.

Regards,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[Mark Rutherford]

OK....
I have a suggestion..
We all concede (with the exception of a few) that Nvidia did nothing wrong with
including headers in their driver.
I dont think they did...
I use their product, and it works well for me.
I would LOVE to see Nvidia open source, but that might just drive a nail in the
right place for them.. and they go under.
We cannot force our ideas on a company, all they will do is turn and walk away.
We can show them our way, if they like it, good. if not, we tried.
I think we have tried, and I think Nvidia is well aware of our way here.
Now, on to the suggestion!

lets let this thread die. its been argued before, over and over.
please?

Post by Andre Hedrick
Hell.Surfers,

Post by H***@cwctv.net
You must understand the GNU/LINUX community is being manipulated by NVidia.

2701 San Tomas Expressway
Santa Clara, CA 95050
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Directions to Corporate Office

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

GO FOR IT!
I will love to see the fall out.
Regards,
Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group
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--
Regards,
Mark Rutherford
***@justirc.net

[Rik van Riel]

Post by Mark Rutherford
I would LOVE to see Nvidia open source,
We cannot force our ideas on a company, all they will do is turn and walk away.
We can show them our way, if they like it, good. if not, we tried.

Nvidia is a smart company, otherwise they wouldn't be in
business today. I'm sure they'll switch to the GPL only
once it will be in their advantage to do so and no sooner.

When would it be an advantage for them ?

The moment there is a GPL graphics library (at the right
system level, of course) that's so good Nvidia won't be
able to resist using that library could be such a moment.

A new project for Hell.Surfers ? ;)

regards,

Rik

[Jos Hulzink]

Post by Rik van Riel

Post by Mark Rutherford
I would LOVE to see Nvidia open source,
We cannot force our ideas on a company, all they will do is turn and walk away.
We can show them our way, if they like it, good. if not, we tried.

Nvidia is a smart company, otherwise they wouldn't be in
business today. I'm sure they'll switch to the GPL only
once it will be in their advantage to do so and no sooner.
When would it be an advantage for them ?
The moment there is a GPL graphics library (at the right
system level, of course) that's so good Nvidia won't be
able to resist using that library could be such a moment.
A new project for Hell.Surfers ? ;)

Mr Surfers has already showed up at the KGI development team, but as I
think his attitude doesn't quite fit in the team, I have not encouraged
him to help.

But yes, there is a GPL graphics kernel module / library (KGI & GGI) that
should run on linux and any BSD real soon now. The Radeon and Matrox
drivers are in place, already. The 3D accelleration framework is in place,
but the GGI GL implementation is not yet existing.

For those who want to take a look: the website (www.kgi-project.org) is
outdated, we lost contact with the maintainer :( Please take a look at the
kgi-wip project at sourceforge (CVS only) and at irc.openprojects.net #kgi

Jos

[H***@cwctv.net]

you are incorrect about how the GPL works you are attempting to anger me but I dont care, go and learn, finish school, then annoy me.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 21:51:45 -0800 A Guy Called Tyketto <***@wizard.com> wrote:

[A Guy Called Tyketto]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
you are incorrect about how the GPL works you are attempting to anger me

but I dont care, go and learn, finish school, then annoy me.
I am? I'm sorry. I did not mean to anger someone who is more
experienced and sagely than a mere fool such as myself. I suppose I'll throw
away my Bachelor's degree in Comp. Sci from '96, all the C programs I've coded
since 91, all the logo since '81, as well as the projects I'm currently
working on. I am such a fool. Back to programming Zaxxon on my Apple IIe for
me. Perhaps even Karateka.. or Spy Hunter.

BTW: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html . Bookmark it. And come
back when you have a better MUA. It's starting to remind me of WebTV.

BL.

P.S.

Kryten: There's something familiar about you, too.. I get a name...
Smee... Smeeg Heeeeeed!!
Rimmer: Smeghead?
Kryten: That's it!
Rimmer: He remembers me!!

[Rik van Riel]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
Why does the community continue to make pacts with a company that steals
from its rivals, makes pacts with M$, and refuses to clearly GPL and

Ohhhh, a conspiracy theory. I like conspiracy theories.
Do tell, what exactly is the conspiracy here and who are
the parties involved ?

Post by H***@cwctv.net
open source its work on drivers, there is a clear difference between
their use of GPL files, and what the GPL says they can do. You cannot
expect embedded kernel developers to GPL, if you excuse Nvidia, its a
vain hope to grab M$ users, but in the long run it destroys the
community.

Copyright law is pretty explicit about the situations the GPL
applies to. If something can be reasonably considered to be
a "derivative work" of a GPL work, the GPL applies and the
new work needs to be GPL.

However, if the new work is NOT a derivative of a GPL work,
the author of that new work gets to choose the license freely.

The border gets determined by inclusion of a copyrightable
piece of GPL code. Really small fragments of code and simple
defines aren't copyrightable, just like you can't copyright a
single musical note, but only a song. If nvidia's driver only
uses some simple declarations from include files and no large
(>7 lines? >10lines? what's large?) inline functions AND the
nvidia driver uses only the standard interfaces to hook into the
Linux kernel, then it's not a derivative work and nvidia gets
to choose the license.

Feel free to get upset or eat your boots at any time you want,
it's not going to change copyright law.

cheers,

Rik

[Paul Jakma]

Post by Rik van Riel
Copyright law is pretty explicit about the situations the GPL
applies to. If something can be reasonably considered to be a
"derivative work" of a GPL work, the GPL applies and the new work
needs to be GPL.
but only a song. If nvidia's driver only uses some simple
declarations from include files and no large (>7 lines? >10lines?
what's large?) inline functions AND the nvidia driver uses only the
standard interfaces to hook into the Linux kernel, then it's not a
derivative work and nvidia gets to choose the license.

It has long been held that linking to GPL code is suffient to
consitute 'derived work' status, hence the existence of the LGPL.

The NVidia shim makes use of several kernel subsystems, the PCI
device layer, the VM, the module system (well really, the kernel
makes of use of the functions the module provides :) ), IRQ
subsystem, the VFS, etc.. These systems are rather large bodies of
code - without which the NVidia kernel driver could not work.

So I am not quite sure on what basis one could argue the NVidia
driver is not a derivative work, and hence it seems to me the NVidia
driver is technically in material breach of GPL.

You seem to be basing your opinion on:

"the nvidia driver uses only the standard interfaces to hook into
the Linux kernel"

How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?

I know Linus' has often posted to l-k that he doesnt care about
binary only modules as long as they stick to the exported interfaces.
However, are all the kernel developers agreed on this? And if so, can
this exception be formalised and put into the COPYING file? If not,
then is NVidia not in breach of the kernel's licence?

Post by Rik van Riel
Rik

regards,

[Alan Cox]

Post by Paul Jakma
So I am not quite sure on what basis one could argue the NVidia
driver is not a derivative work, and hence it seems to me the NVidia
driver is technically in material breach of GPL.

I would assume Nvidia's view is based on US caselaw on what constitutes
a 'derived work'. The boundaries of copyright are not set by the GPL
authors

[Paul Jakma]

Post by Alan Cox
I would assume Nvidia's view is based on US caselaw on what
constitutes a 'derived work'. The boundaries of copyright are not
set by the GPL authors

indeed, and apparently its not at all a black-and-white area. to that
end, i'll point to the following thread:

http://www.mail-archive.com/license-***@opensource.org/msg05725.html

and the paper it links to, "derived software defined" (no idea whether
its accurate):

http://www.pbwt.com/Attorney/files/ravicher_1.pdf

and as IANAL, i'll shut up now.

regards,

[David Lang]

well libc uses the kernel headers and basicly all userspace programs use
libc so that makes oracle a derivitive work of the kernel??????

luckly that's not how things actually work.

David Lang

Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 00:31:13 +0000 (GMT)
Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source
drivers?

Post by Rik van Riel
Copyright law is pretty explicit about the situations the GPL
applies to. If something can be reasonably considered to be a
"derivative work" of a GPL work, the GPL applies and the new work
needs to be GPL.
but only a song. If nvidia's driver only uses some simple
declarations from include files and no large (>7 lines? >10lines?
what's large?) inline functions AND the nvidia driver uses only the
standard interfaces to hook into the Linux kernel, then it's not a
derivative work and nvidia gets to choose the license.

It has long been held that linking to GPL code is suffient to
consitute 'derived work' status, hence the existence of the LGPL.
The NVidia shim makes use of several kernel subsystems, the PCI
device layer, the VM, the module system (well really, the kernel
makes of use of the functions the module provides :) ), IRQ
subsystem, the VFS, etc.. These systems are rather large bodies of
code - without which the NVidia kernel driver could not work.
So I am not quite sure on what basis one could argue the NVidia
driver is not a derivative work, and hence it seems to me the NVidia
driver is technically in material breach of GPL.
"the nvidia driver uses only the standard interfaces to hook into
the Linux kernel"
How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?
I know Linus' has often posted to l-k that he doesnt care about
binary only modules as long as they stick to the exported interfaces.
However, are all the kernel developers agreed on this? And if so, can
this exception be formalised and put into the COPYING file? If not,
then is NVidia not in breach of the kernel's licence?

Post by Rik van Riel
Rik

regards,
--
Programmers do it bit by bit.
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[Paul Jakma]

Post by David Lang
well libc uses the kernel headers and basicly all userspace programs
use libc so that makes oracle a derivitive work of the kernel??????

libc neednt neccessarily use the kernel headers, it needs to use only
headers that are compatible. Also, though it might use kernel headers,
the headers it provides for other programmes to be compiled against it
are not kernel headers.

further, the kernel's licence explicitely exempts the 'normal system
calls', and kernel headers describing these can quite arguably be
considered to fall within this exemption.

Post by David Lang
luckly that's not how things actually work.

unfortunately, its not at all clear.

Post by David Lang
David Lang

regards,

[David Lang]

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by David Lang
well libc uses the kernel headers and basicly all userspace programs
use libc so that makes oracle a derivitive work of the kernel??????

libc neednt neccessarily use the kernel headers, it needs to use only
headers that are compatible. Also, though it might use kernel headers,
the headers it provides for other programmes to be compiled against it
are not kernel headers.
further, the kernel's licence explicitely exempts the 'normal system
calls', and kernel headers describing these can quite arguably be
considered to fall within this exemption.

this is exactly the reasoning that nvidia uses to justify their use of the
headers.

you can't have it both ways.

David Lang

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by David Lang
luckly that's not how things actually work.

unfortunately, its not at all clear.

Post by David Lang
David Lang

regards,
--
Paul Jakma Sys Admin Alphyra

[Paul Jakma]

Post by David Lang

Post by Paul Jakma
further, the kernel's licence explicitely exempts the 'normal system
calls', and kernel headers describing these can quite arguably be
considered to fall within this exemption.

this is exactly the reasoning that nvidia uses to justify their use of the
headers.

a kernel module does not make of use of the calls the exemption refers
to. it calls exported /kernel/ functions.

Post by David Lang
you can't have it both ways.
David Lang

regards,

[Bill Huey (Hui)]

Post by Paul Jakma
The NVidia shim makes use of several kernel subsystems, the PCI
device layer, the VM, the module system (well really, the kernel
makes of use of the functions the module provides :) ), IRQ
subsystem, the VFS, etc.. These systems are rather large bodies of
code - without which the NVidia kernel driver could not work.

Well, no, look at the "nm" dump of the object file. It's got a lot of
proprietary code that came from what looks like commerical libraries
that they don't own. Back when they wrote the original drive, the GPL
equivalents of DRM, AGP, etc... sucked so they had to write their own
stuff just to get anything basic working.

Post by Paul Jakma
driver is not a derivative work, and hence it seems to me the NVidia
driver is technically in material breach of GPL.

Their portability layer wraps the low level calls into their own
terminology and portability API. It's fairly outside of the linux kernel
itself, internally the object file looks very Win32ish.

Obviously a GPL rewrite of this would entail a lot of replicated effort
and would also depend on things that are incomplete, non-existent and
don't have a lot direct interest from the GPL community. 3D isn't a hot
commodity in Linux, FreeBSD unlike with dedicated SGI machines (although
faded).

It's a very practical solution to do it this way.

Post by Paul Jakma
So I am not quite sure on what basis one could argue the NVidia
"the nvidia driver uses only the standard interfaces to hook into
the Linux kernel"
How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?

All I saw where kernel header files include in the sources, nothing
more. They have to support multipule architecture and OSes so keeping
this stuff outside of the driver is a good thing. The GPL-ly stuff is
publically available as source files.

Post by Paul Jakma
I know Linus' has often posted to l-k that he doesnt care about
binary only modules as long as they stick to the exported interfaces.
However, are all the kernel developers agreed on this? And if so, can
this exception be formalised and put into the COPYING file? If not,
then is NVidia not in breach of the kernel's licence?

I'd rather have the experts do it at NVidia, than a half completed open
source implementation that isn't terribly optimized.

Matrix multiplies, T&L, etc... communication between user and kernel
space that provides this to the OpenGL libraries are all exotic. I'm glad
that nobody has to deal with this stuff directly and that a vendor is
willing to provide support for it.

bill

[Paul Jakma]

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)

Post by Paul Jakma
subsystem, the VFS, etc.. These systems are rather large bodies of
code - without which the NVidia kernel driver could not work.

Well, no, look at the "nm" dump of the object file. It's got a lot of
proprietary code

indeed. that doesnt change the fact that this large body of NVidia
specific code still must make use of large parts of linux code
(through function calls).

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
It's a very practical solution to do it this way.

yes, but the legalities of it are rather grey.

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)

Post by Paul Jakma
How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?

All I saw where kernel header files include in the sources, nothing
more.

indeed, and if that were the only issue it would be clear there is no
issue. however, it must make use of linux code at runtime through
function calls - as linux makes use of the NVidia proprietary code by
calling the functions it provides.

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
I'd rather have the experts do it at NVidia, than a half completed
open source implementation that isn't terribly optimized.

I run systems that use many GPL and fully open drivers that are quite
well optimised. Some of these drivers were written by the vendor's
"experts" and are distributed seperately - still GPL though.
Sometimes one has a choice between drivers written by the vendor and
drivers written by (non-expert???) "community" authors, and often one
finds the vendor driver is the one that isn't terribly optimised.

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
Matrix multiplies, T&L, etc...

none of this stuff is done in kernel (least it shouldnt be). Its done
in user-space libraries.

The XFree licence allows binary only modules, indeed XFree 4 was
designed to make distribution of (possibly binary) modules as easy as
possible.

There isnt that much magic the NVidia kernel modules ought to be
doing really.

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
communication between user and kernel space that provides this to
the OpenGL libraries are all exotic. I'm glad that nobody has to
deal with this stuff directly and that a vendor is willing to
provide support for it.

aha.. yes, all that complicated hardware stuff - you dont really want
those linux kernel amatuers writing that.

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
bill

regards,

[Bill Huey (Hui)]

Post by Paul Jakma
yes, but the legalities of it are rather grey.

It didn't seem that bad to me, it was all pretty abstracted outside of
their code. The glue layer to their object file is GPLed and therefore
public so that should be fine from what I can see.

Post by Paul Jakma
indeed, and if that were the only issue it would be clear there is no
issue. however, it must make use of linux code at runtime through
function calls - as linux makes use of the NVidia proprietary code by
calling the functions it provides.

Like what ? PCI IO poking functions ? Things that do mmap() trickery ?
That's pretty freaking basic. There wasn't anything terribly invasive
about the driver and source that I saw.

Post by Paul Jakma
Sometimes one has a choice between drivers written by the vendor and
drivers written by (non-expert???) "community" authors, and often one
finds the vendor driver is the one that isn't terribly optimised.

But this is computationally critical 3D. I mean, what kind of 3D vendor
would intentionally let something like that slide on x86 platforms ?

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
Matrix multiplies, T&L, etc...

none of this stuff is done in kernel (least it shouldnt be). Its done
in user-space libraries.

That stuff is done in hardware these days, not software. I mean, how would
anybody know what they're using. Why replicate that volume of functionality
when it already works well.

It simply doesn't make sense. I'm sure when decent AGP/DRM support is in
place they can start removing that stuff out of the Linux binary and
then make more of that publically available.

There motivations where to simply protect themselve by not releasing
proprietary code.

Post by Paul Jakma
The XFree licence allows binary only modules, indeed XFree 4 was
designed to make distribution of (possibly binary) modules as easy as
possible.
There isnt that much magic the NVidia kernel modules ought to be
doing really.

Notification of event completion from the (just guessing) who knows what
opcode operations the chip is doing, fast draw context switching, who knows.
These things are starting to look like FPU coprocessors, circa 1990, these
days.

Different hardware has differing needs. If it's pretty freaking exotic, then
let it to those folks handle it and the glue layer to userspace. It's not
like folks in GPL community write entire 3D frameworks for this casually.

High performance 3D is a Linux priority at this time. No real games or
heavy 3D apps that use crazy chips stuff...

Post by Paul Jakma

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
communication between user and kernel space that provides this to
the OpenGL libraries are all exotic. I'm glad that nobody has to
deal with this stuff directly and that a vendor is willing to
provide support for it.

aha.. yes, all that complicated hardware stuff - you dont really want
those linux kernel amatuers writing that.

Well, having a generic kernel person, regardless of who they are, messing
with 3d chips and interfacing it with their OpenGL libs isn't a light topic.
This crap is heavy. So yes, its a good thing they've done this. What the
hell do you think this is ? an Ethernet driver ?

bill

[Mark Mielke]

GPL aside (it could be argued forever...):

I regularly use several kernel modules that provide a GPL component that
interfaces the module to the kernel, and a closed source object file that
is dynamically loaded as a kernel module at run time.

If I did not have these modules, I would not be able to use Linux as my
host operating system.

So... to those (Hell.Surfers especially it seems) who believe that they
are doing good by making a scene... realize that while you may succeed
in improving the integrity of the GPL, you will also succeed in convincing
companies that it may be more expensive than it is worth to provide their
hardware or software for Linux. That may mean that I will be forced to
stop using Linux at work, and possibly forced to stop using Linux at home.

Perhaps I am a minority. Are you willing to bet the future of Linux on it?

mark
--
***@mielke.cc/***@ncf.ca/***@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
. . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ |
| | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them...

http://mark.mielke.cc/

[Richard Stallman]

I regularly use several kernel modules that provide a GPL component that
interfaces the module to the kernel, and a closed source object file that
is dynamically loaded as a kernel module at run time.

If I did not have these modules, I would not be able to use Linux as my
host operating system.

Many enthusiasts the "Linux" operating system take the popularity of
the system (or of the kernel, Linux) as the supreme goal; but why
should the popularity of any one operating system or program be so
important? That isn't what really matters.

We developed the GNU system for the sake of freedom, and freedom is
what really matters. The GNU/Linux system today is important because
it offers a road to freedom. But it doesn't guarantee you will arrive
there. If you use non-free drivers, you go just part way along the
road and never arrive at freedom. That defeats the purpose. To
achieve freedom, we need to insist on free drivers (and free
applications).

Erik Andersen <***@codepoet.org> wrote:

If nvidia provided non-functional GPL
source code with all the proprietary 3rd party bits ripped out,
I would expect a hoard of developers would jump at the chance to
fixup the non-functional mess, clean it up, reimplement all the
missing proprietary bits. I'd bet you $20 US we could have a
functional driver within 2 weeks.

If NVidia cooperates with us this much, we should certainly pick up
the ball from there, and I am sure we will manage to go the rest of
the way. But don't bet on 2 weeks. Softare always takes twice as
long as you expect ;-). If it takes a whole month month to be able to
use NVidia hardware in freedom, I won't complain about the delay.

But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient. It might take more
than 4 weeks to write the code, but surely not more than a few months.

[Larry McVoy]

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Yeah, if only the company that has invested millions in trying to scratch
out a place to stand, if only they would give us their intellectual
property for free, if only, why then we could steal that IP and give it
to other people. And it would take us less time to do it if they would
only cooperate. Why won't they cooperate?

How dare they not give of the fruits of their labors for free.

Give it up, Stallman, we live in a capitalistic world. The Russians
tried communism and it didn't work. It won't work here either, the
kernel folks aren't that stupid. Some people actually do learn from
history.

[Erik Andersen]

Post by Larry McVoy

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Yeah, if only the company that has invested millions in trying to scratch
out a place to stand, if only they would give us their intellectual
property for free, if only, why then we could steal that IP and give it
to other people. And it would take us less time to do it if they would
only cooperate. Why won't they cooperate?
How dare they not give of the fruits of their labors for free.

Unless I am terribly mistaken, Nvidia is a _hardware_ company.
Their IP is a piece of silicon, fans, connectors, and resistors
that you go to the store and _buy_. If you go visit pricewatch,
it becomes immediately clear they are certainly not giving away
their graphics cards for free. No one (not even rms) would
expect them to give away their hardware for free. It takes money
to design and produce such products, and they deserve a fair
chance to make $$$ for their efforts.

If they are worried their competitors might try to do the same
nifty things with competing hardware, they should patent the
methods used by their nifty 3D hardware. And if you go take a
look, Nvidia has done exactly that. They have a big pile of
patents protecting their hardware and 3D methods from being
ripped off. I'll leave my usual rant on software and algorithm
patents for another day, but given their pile of patents, I
expect any driver specs and software they release would be
useless to anyone but those that have purchased the right to use
their IP (by buying one of their cards). So how exactly do they
lose by giving out the details needed for proper drivers, or by
providing source under the GPL?

I can see your arguments above as perhaps relevant to a software
company (cough, BK, cough), but this is not relevant to a hardware
company like Nvidia. Unless their hardware is just an expensive
placebo, and they really do _everything_ in software (dunno)?

-Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

[Larry McVoy]

Post by Erik Andersen

Post by Larry McVoy

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Yeah, if only the company that has invested millions in trying to scratch
out a place to stand, if only they would give us their intellectual
property for free, if only, why then we could steal that IP and give it
to other people. And it would take us less time to do it if they would
only cooperate. Why won't they cooperate?
How dare they not give of the fruits of their labors for free.

Unless I am terribly mistaken, Nvidia is a _hardware_ company.
Their IP is a piece of silicon, fans, connectors, and resistors
that you go to the store and _buy_. If you go visit pricewatch,
it becomes immediately clear they are certainly not giving away
their graphics cards for free. No one (not even rms) would
expect them to give away their hardware for free. It takes money
to design and produce such products, and they deserve a fair
chance to make $$$ for their efforts.
If they are worried their competitors might try to do the same
nifty things with competing hardware, they should patent the
methods used by their nifty 3D hardware.

It's virtually impossible to patent every aspect of a product, be it
software or hardware. I'm well aware of the tradeoffs, and I know that
every company gambles to some extent. You simply can't cover all the
bases, you don't really know in advance which of the cool ideas will
pay off. Sometimes it's the bad ideas which pay off.

Given that patents don't cover everything, disclosing how your product
works is doing nothing except helping your competition. If you don't
disclose, you buy time. What you are suggesting is that Nvidia give up
that time. In return for what? Your whining? Wow, that's inspiring.

<RANT>
I am REALLY REALLY fed up with all the armchair quarterbacks on this list.
If you all think you have it so figured out, then get off your ass and
go start a company. Give out full access to all of your IP, give out
everything that you have been asking for, and make your company survive.
Oh, having a little trouble getting VC while you give away your IP?
Oh darn. Don't forget to patent everything at $15K/patent. What,
the VC people won't give you the money for that because you gave away
your IP. Huh. Guess that wasn't such a winning plan after all, was it.
Jeez, didn't make payroll this week either, did ya? But it all sounded
so good when you were telling other people how to do it. What went wrong?

It is oh-so-easy to sit around and say "this is what should be done".
Try being on the other end of that statement for a while and then
tell us how it should be done.

Stop whining, start doing, and until you've done so, shut the f*ck up.
</RANT>

[David S. Miller]

Post by Erik Andersen
If they are worried their competitors might try to do the same
nifty things with competing hardware, they should patent the
methods used by their nifty 3D hardware. And if you go take a
look, Nvidia has done exactly that.

Hehe, maybe the issue is just that... other people's patents :-)

[Marco Monteiro]

Post by Larry McVoy

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Give it up, Stallman, we live in a capitalistic world. The Russians
tried communism and it didn't work. It won't work here either, the
kernel folks aren't that stupid. Some people actually do learn from
history.

It won't work? Most of the software you use is Free Software. I don't
see anyone using Linux and not using Free software. I use only software
that is Free, and I'm not limited by doing it, in any sense. And it
won't work? It IS working.

And I don't buy NVIDIA hardware.

[Andre Hedrick]

Post by Marco Monteiro

Post by Larry McVoy

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Give it up, Stallman, we live in a capitalistic world. The Russians
tried communism and it didn't work. It won't work here either, the
kernel folks aren't that stupid. Some people actually do learn from
history.

It won't work? Most of the software you use is Free Software. I don't
see anyone using Linux and not using Free software. I use only software
that is Free, and I'm not limited by doing it, in any sense. And it
won't work? It IS working.
And I don't buy NVIDIA hardware.

Excellent you exercise your freedom of choice.
Now do not take away anyone elses and all is cool.
What is so hard about that?

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[Andre Hedrick]

Post by Mark Mielke
I regularly use several kernel modules that provide a GPL component that
interfaces the module to the kernel, and a closed source object file that
is dynamically loaded as a kernel module at run time.
If I did not have these modules, I would not be able to use Linux as my
host operating system.
Many enthusiasts the "Linux" operating system take the popularity of
the system (or of the kernel, Linux) as the supreme goal; but why
should the popularity of any one operating system or program be so
important? That isn't what really matters.

You forget a key aspect, the "GNU system Suite" needs a frame work to
function.

Post by Mark Mielke
We developed the GNU system for the sake of freedom, and freedom is
what really matters. The GNU/Linux system today is important because
it offers a road to freedom. But it doesn't guarantee you will arrive

Let people travel the road of choice, and not dictate they have to ride
a bobsled straight to HELL^W(your definition of freedom) with you pushing
all the way down.

Post by Mark Mielke
there. If you use non-free drivers, you go just part way along the
road and never arrive at freedom. That defeats the purpose. To
achieve freedom, we need to insist on free drivers (and free
applications).

Your definition of FREEDOM STINKS!

FREEDOM == CHOICE !

If people want to use "non-free drivers", they choose to execute the
freedom to do so. Now, what is clearly stated in your text is, FREEDOM
means the vendor of the "non-free drivers" has NONE!

If people want to have "free drivers" then contribute them.
What I see is a lot of people wait for new technology to be supported,
yet do nothing to enable the ones who have access and are willing to take
the risks of dealing with the vendors who are paranoid.

Post by Mark Mielke
If NVidia cooperates with us this much, we should certainly pick up

What if they decide to thumb the nose at you?
What if they decide to withdraw their drivers?

Is your ego of "my way or no way" or "it is my license, I dictate its use"
or .... fill in the blank, sigh ... never mind.

You bang a drum of fair use for everything else which does not have GPL
stamped and pounded into it. Maybe you should allow a little fair use in
your world of the license. Oh, I am dreaming and so now to the rant!

Post by Mark Mielke
the ball from there, and I am sure we will manage to go the rest of
the way. But don't bet on 2 weeks. Softare always takes twice as
long as you expect ;-). If it takes a whole month month to be able to
use NVidia hardware in freedom, I won't complain about the delay.

<RANT RANT DOUBLE_RANT>

Execise your CHOICE and FREEDOM is yours.

FREEDOM to pick and use hardware which is not natively supported.
FREEDOM to use protocols which are not support.
FREEDOM to use drivers which do the task you desire.

or enjoy your CAPTIVITY with a loss of CHOICE.

CAPTIVITY, well there is the FREEDOM to use what is supported open.
CAPTIVITY, well this is not supported, no options available.
CAPTIVITY, no drivers capable, we suffer down time to wait for a
sucker^Whacker^Wcodepoet^Wwhatever will slave for us.

</RANT /RANT /DOUBLE_RANT>

Post by Mark Mielke
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient. It might take more
than 4 weeks to write the code, but surely not more than a few months.

Gee, it has taken 12 years to get to where we are now.
Is everything today which is in the kernel "fully functional" ?

Come on Richard, this is not your "printer".
It is something of beauty wrappered with a tarbaby in front of a briar
patch. Ease up with the sticky fingered tarbaby, the briar patch is
enough of a boundary.

Next go pick and use words out of BLACK's LAW.
You risk it all with out drawing crisp clear lines.
All it takes is for one loss in court and the fear of legal action is
history. The court battle may not fall in a circuit which is friendly to
your choice of words in the license.


Regards,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[Mike Galbraith]

Post by Larry McVoy

Post by Richard Stallman
But we could make do with even less cooperation than that. If they
just provide the necessary specs to a person who wants to extend the
free drivers that exist, that would be sufficient.

Yeah, if only the company that has invested millions in trying to scratch
out a place to stand, if only they would give us their intellectual
property for free, if only, why then we could steal that IP and give it
to other people. And it would take us less time to do it if they would
only cooperate. Why won't they cooperate?
How dare they not give of the fruits of their labors for free.

<yank>
You're just saying that to justify your evil BK license ;-)
</yank> (hey, somebody was _gonna_ do it)

Seriously though, just what is it that graphic CPU makers are
protecting? I can't imagine "how to program our spiffy CPU'" docs exposing
anything important to their competition. Imagine Intel or AMD trying that
tactic for _their_ next CPU. What makes graphics CPUs so special?

-Mike

[Brad Hards]

Post by Mike Galbraith
Seriously though, just what is it that graphic CPU makers are
protecting? I can't imagine "how to program our spiffy CPU'" docs exposing
anything important to their competition. Imagine Intel or AMD trying that
tactic for _their_ next CPU. What makes graphics CPUs so special?

Giving away the technical detail probably shows where they are infringing
other people's patents.

I _hate_ intellectual property.

Brad
- --
http://linux.conf.au. 22-25Jan2003. Perth, Aust. I'm registered. Are you?

[Andre Hedrick]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Post by Mike Galbraith
Seriously though, just what is it that graphic CPU makers are
protecting? I can't imagine "how to program our spiffy CPU'" docs exposing
anything important to their competition. Imagine Intel or AMD trying that
tactic for _their_ next CPU. What makes graphics CPUs so special?

Giving away the technical detail probably shows where they are infringing
other people's patents.

You could not hit the core point of this issue any harder!
This is one of the reason I have to sign all those massive restrictive
NDA's in order to obtain the SPEC's to publish "FREE SOURCE", and
currently having to write off the expenses for the legalese to make sure I
do not get trapped.

If you get to close, you get tatooed with NDA's.

I can heat my house for the winter in a few years when the first round of
NDAs expire!

Cheers,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

[Mark Mielke]

Post by Richard Stallman
We developed the GNU system for the sake of freedom, and freedom is
what really matters. The GNU/Linux system today is important because
it offers a road to freedom. But it doesn't guarantee you will arrive
...

You don't seem to mind the fact that my freedom to use Linux would be
hampered if you successfully prove that closed source modules for
Linux are illegal.

If open source is so good, companies with closed source products will
change. Have some faith in your own set of ideals and stop trying to
jam it down other peoples' throats.

Here is another factor to consider. Copyrights and patents are all nice
and dandy, but unless you can make a court case that proves that you,
or the 'violated party' is *LOSING MONEY*, the case would likely be
thrown out of court. What money are you losing by nVidia using closed
source modules for their proprietary hardware? nVidia believes it is
protecting its own interests. You believe that they don't deserve this
right, and that any company that doesn't agree with you doesn't deserve
to use Linux.

I can see all the freedom in the air. It is overpowering.

mark
--
***@mielke.cc/***@ncf.ca/***@nortelnetworks.com __________________________
. . _ ._ . . .__ . . ._. .__ . . . .__ | Neighbourhood Coder
|\/| |_| |_| |/ |_ |\/| | |_ | |/ |_ |
| | | | | \ | \ |__ . | | .|. |__ |__ | \ |__ | Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them...

http://mark.mielke.cc/

[Rik van Riel]

Post by Richard Stallman
We developed the GNU system for the sake of freedom, and freedom is
what really matters.

IMHO such freedom should leave the option of not having free
drivers to companies like Nvidia.

Mind you that their freedom is more than compensated for by
our freedom to decide to not buy their hardware and use hardware
which does have free drivers instead.

Have some faith in freedom, Richard...

Rik

[Christoph Hellwig]

Post by Rik van Riel
IMHO such freedom should leave the option of not having free
drivers to companies like Nvidia.
Mind you that their freedom is more than compensated for by
our freedom to decide to not buy their hardware and use hardware
which does have free drivers instead.
Have some faith in freedom, Richard...

The real issue about freedom is that people should be able to use
parts of the GNU systems without having to add a GNU/ prefix to all
their naming schemes.. :)

[Erik Andersen]

Post by Bill Huey (Hui)
Obviously a GPL rewrite of this would entail a lot of replicated effort
and would also depend on things that are incomplete, non-existent and
don't have a lot direct interest from the GPL community. 3D isn't a hot
commodity in Linux, FreeBSD unlike with dedicated SGI machines (although
faded).

Ahh, but replicated effort is something that open source people
do very well at indeed. If nvidia provided non-functional GPL
source code with all the proprietary 3rd party bits ripped out,
I would expect a hoard of developers would jump at the chance to
fixup the non-functional mess, clean it up, reimplement all the
missing proprietary bits. I'd bet you $20 US we could have a
functional driver within 2 weeks. And have a high quality driver
roughly equal to their proprietary one within 6 months. Thats
the way things work around these parts of the net. I bought a
copy of Quake when they GPLd their code to show support. I
similarly bought a copy of Quake II after they GPLd their code.
If Nvidia released their code under the GPL, I'd buy one of their
cards. As is, I'm sticking with my ATI card...

-Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

[Bill Huey (Hui)]

Post by Erik Andersen
missing proprietary bits. I'd bet you $20 US we could have a
functional driver within 2 weeks. And have a high quality driver
roughly equal to their proprietary one within 6 months. Thats

That's being too idealistic, IMO. And hearing somebody like me
say that, well...uh...;)

Post by Erik Andersen
the way things work around these parts of the net. I bought a
copy of Quake when they GPLd their code to show support. I
similarly bought a copy of Quake II after they GPLd their code.
If Nvidia released their code under the GPL, I'd buy one of their
cards. As is, I'm sticking with my ATI card...

I think folks have to identify if the company is doing this
intentionally to hold into something irrationally or just because
of legal reasons. If it's just legal reasons, then i'll give them
slack.

bill

[David Schwartz]

Post by Paul Jakma
How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?

Surely you aren't arguing that someone can copyright

int open(const char *, int);

Are you?

There's the battle and there's the war. The GPL is the battle. If you argue
that any code that goes anywhere near anyone else's code is a derived work,
you may win the battle by buttressing the GPL, but you will lose the war.

The open source community wasn't the first to use 'int open(const char *,
int)'. If you want to argue that this is an interface that can be
copyrighted, then we're all screwed.

Defending fair use and first sale type doctrines and rejecting shrink wrap
agreements is far more important than defending the GPL.

Using someone else's header file to develop code is *use*, not distribution.
That's what header files are for -- that's how you *use* them, by including
them. If someone wants to substitute more stringent restrictions, then they
can do that by contract.

DS

[H***@cwctv.net]

NVidia would not go under, but if they did, you would still have drivers for it.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Wed, 01 Jan 2003 11:13:28 -0500 Mark Rutherford <***@justirc.net> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

the eula is irrelevent, it should be GPL, oh and I read the drivers on a computer with an geforce card. which i now own;)

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Tue, 31 Dec 2002 23:38:58 -0800 (PST) Andre Hedrick <***@linux-ide.org> wrote:

[Andre Hedrick]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
the eula is irrelevent, it should be GPL, oh and I read the drivers on
a computer with an geforce card. which i now own;)
Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

Well, I am glad you now own a "geforce card".
You are now a customer.
You can now execute your rants about the binary drivers with Nvidia.

Regards,

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group

Note to self, never be stupid enough to comment on data or information
from "Hell.Surfers", again !!! Somebody LART me please!

[H***@cwctv.net]

The NVidia driver is derivative, a lot of people put trust in the GPL and I am one, im currently picking a solicitor, NVidia will either win or lose, if I lose, M$ win may soon be a lot like Linux.

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 17:37:36 -0800 Bill Huey (Hui) <***@gnuppy.monkey.org> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

"or later" perhaps copyright could be defined, and headers added to derivative?

Dean. Three ways to kill yourself, and ive been drove in one...

On 02 Jan 2003 01:57:01 +0000 Alan Cox <***@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:

[Rik van Riel]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
"or later" perhaps copyright could be defined, and headers added to derivative?

Luckily copyright holders cannot define the scope of copyright
law. This doesn't just include the (often illegal) EULAs of
proprietary software companies, but also the very strict
interpretation "some people" have of the GPL.

Both proprietary EULAs and the GPL have to work within the law
and cannot add anything illegal under the law.

Rik

[H***@cwctv.net]

no winmodem equivalent. Ive backwards enginneered one of those...:-)

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 21:58:59 -0800 Bill Huey (Hui) <***@gnuppy.monkey.org> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

in a way, yes.

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 17:08:26 -0800 (PST) David Lang <***@digitalinsight.com> wrote:

[Milosz Tanski]

There is (was) an effort for opensource 3d drivers (including nvidia
ones), infact i rember they got quake II and III working in 32bit color
mode, if i rember correctly. If you go grieff, then go visit
http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net/ and help out. Make the drivers better
then the nvidia ones (ya right!) so they will be forced to use your code
on other paltforms (and then nvidia would be forced to use it, and thus
open up their code). I'll see you in two years, when you fully complete
the drivers? Ok, bye.

P.S: I think the code there is under a BSD (BSDish, MITish licence,
...).

[Paul Jakma]

be forced to use it, and thus open up their code). I'll see you in
two years, when you fully complete the drivers? Ok, bye.

NVidia would not release the neccessary specs to the project to allow
them to write acceptable drivers. That is why they are so lacking -
but its amazing they even got that far.

P.S: I think the code there is under a BSD (BSDish, MITish licence,
...).

XFree licence, yes. Which allows binary only modules.

regards

[Alan Cox]

Post by Milosz Tanski
There is (was) an effort for opensource 3d drivers (including nvidia
ones), infact i rember they got quake II and III working in 32bit color
mode, if i rember correctly. If you go grieff, then go visit
http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net/ and help out. Make the drivers better
then the nvidia ones (ya right!) so they will be forced to use your code
on other paltforms (and then nvidia would be forced to use it, and thus
open up their code). I'll see you in two years, when you fully complete
the drivers? Ok, bye.
P.S: I think the code there is under a BSD (BSDish, MITish licence,

Utah-GLX supports the older Nvidia cards, and works in XFree86 4.2 at
least - although since its based on an older Mesa not all stuff works
well with it.

Alan

[H***@cwctv.net]

if libc used compatible headers, they would be derivative....

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 01:29:59 +0000 (GMT) Paul Jakma <***@alphyra.ie> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

linus cant alter the GPL, which is gooooood :-), he cant change the license at all... Imagine the people that would sue :-).

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 00:31:13 +0000 (GMT) Paul Jakma <***@clubi.ie> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

Sounds better... But still incorrectly licensed.

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 01:34:05 -0500 Milosz Tanski <***@wideopenwest.com> wrote:

[Milosz Tanski]

Before jumping to conclusions, go check out the site, read the licences
etc. If i rember correctly some modules are under a BSD like licence
(correct me if i'm wrong). I don't think the utah-glx folk are using the
kernel (kernel modules), but i haven't looked close enouth at it (and
dosn't seam like you did too).

[H***@cwctv.net]

I say we start a driver based on the UTAHs. MR. Anderson had a good schedule :), knock knock neo... ;-))

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 23:12:33 -0700 Erik Andersen <***@codepoet.org> wrote:

[Erik Andersen]

Post by H***@cwctv.net
I say we start a driver based on the UTAHs. MR. Anderson had
a good schedule :), knock knock neo... ;-))

And I live in Utah. ;-) Seriously though, that schedule would
only be feasible given enough human resources -- and given either
source code or proper docs for their chipsets, which relies on
Nvidia playing nice and kindly choosing to share.

Relying on guesswork and/or reverse engineering without proper
vendor cooperation, which is exactly the case with the Utah GLX
driver, it'll take a much longer time and will likely not attract
the same amount of human resources as a result.

-Erik

--
Erik B. Andersen http://codepoet-consulting.com/
--This message was written using 73% post-consumer electrons--

[Milosz Tanski]

Well, i dunno how i got drawed into to (well i do). Your right, but i'm
just trying to find a usefull solution for me having to download and
shift though a ~500kb discussion leading noware (drawing my conclusion
from the past here). I don't think Hell.Surfers is going to accomplish
anything here, besides angering a whole bunch of people (am i right?).
Sooner or later, some one is going to come up with the idea of
--attempting to-- banning him from the mailing list (just like RMS
before), and thats again accompilished nothing. And damn it, i'd love to
have opensource (or freesoftware, whatever the politicaly correct thing
is :) ) nvidia drivers, so i could attempt to fix the Twin view
flakinies, have the nvidia drivers use the kernel nvidia fb, and have
dual head console, etc.

[Gerhard Mack]

Hes trolling... these sorts of things are such a muddy mess in the US that
it's a coin toss whether any lawsuit will win.

He should stop talking about it and just do it and in the meantime
us would be better off just black holing his email. I doubt hes going to
go through with it and I question how much money someone who has to get
his internet access off a TV settop box really has enough money to pay for
the planned lawsuit anyhow.

Can we all stop feeding the trolls now?

Gerhard

cat >> ~/.procmailrc << _END_
:0 W
* ^X-Mailing-List.*linux-***@vger\.kernel\.org
* ^(((From):)|( )).****@cwctv\.net
/dev/null

_END_

Date: Thu, 2 Jan 2003 02:06:44 -0500
Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source
drivers?
Well, i dunno how i got drawed into to (well i do). Your right, but i'm
just trying to find a usefull solution for me having to download and
shift though a ~500kb discussion leading noware (drawing my conclusion
from the past here). I don't think Hell.Surfers is going to accomplish
anything here, besides angering a whole bunch of people (am i right?).
Sooner or later, some one is going to come up with the idea of
--attempting to-- banning him from the mailing list (just like RMS
before), and thats again accompilished nothing. And damn it, i'd love to
have opensource (or freesoftware, whatever the politicaly correct thing
is :) ) nvidia drivers, so i could attempt to fix the Twin view
flakinies, have the nvidia drivers use the kernel nvidia fb, and have
dual head console, etc.

--
Gerhard Mack

***@innerfire.net

<>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.

[Milosz Tanski]

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 23:56:03 -0700

bla bla bla

Well, i dunno how i got drawed into to (well i do). Your right, but i'm
just trying to find a usefull solution for me having to download and
shift though a ~500kb discussion leading noware (drawing my conclusion
from the past here). I don't think Hell.Surfers is going to accomplish
anything here, besides angering a whole bunch of people (am i right?).
Sooner or later, some one is going to come up with the idea of
--attempting to-- banning him from the mailing list (just like RMS
before), and thats again accompilished nothing. And damn it, i'd love to
have opensource (or freesoftware, whatever the politicaly correct thing
is :) ) nvidia drivers, so i could attempt to fix the Twin view
flakinies, have the nvidia drivers use the kernel nvidia fb, and have
dual head console, etc.

P.S: I hope this isn't a double, since the last email was no go.

[H***@cwctv.net]

unfortuanately it requires patches, doesnt have a clear license, has bad coding style, the docs suck, im stuck to my eyeballs in cirrus code, and well, its not very clean, requires two input layer hacks, im writing docs that dont get completed cause the api, well, it sucks, aside from that, ive got a nice ggi acorn emulator...

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 10:57:54 +0100 (CET) Jos Hulzink <***@stack.nl> wrote:

[H***@cwctv.net]

not in the us, in the uk, i have nothing to lose.

Dean McEwan, If the drugs don't work, [sarcasm] take more...[/sarcasm].

On Thu, 2 Jan 2003 12:33:22 -0500 (EST) Gerhard Mack <***@innerfire.net> wrote: