perfect example of this is the creative SBLIVE driver.
original sblive linux driver was closed source binary only driver.
after creative opened the drivers source (and even provided developers from
inside the company) there are daily improvements to the driver.
and this driver is now a major part of most linux distributions, and will be
in linux 2.4.0 as a standard module.
If NVIDIA did this i would be VERY happy, and yes, the drivers would be much
faster under linux than they are under WINXX.
The reason people buy nvidia cards is because they are ****** fast. Faster
than everything else out there. But from a publicity standpoint, it would
be better if people didn't buy them and we went with something that had open
source drivers. It just wouldn't be as fast.
----- Original Message -----
From: "ptah" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, May 07, 2000 11:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Cooker] Licence, issues, (Nvidia, binary, drivers
> > Um, yes nVidia said they will correct their GPL violation. That's not
> > what concerns me. What concerns me is people demanding that we start
> > putting more non-free software in the distro. Pretty soon it'll get to
> > the point where 25% of the distro (probably mostly drivers) are closed
> > source. There's something disturbing about that. I don't want to go back
> > to waiting 6 months to a year for a vendor to update their drivers. The
> > power of the free software movement is to allow anyone with the proper
> > knowledge to improve code..make it more efficient. I'd be just about
> > willing to bet that within a month of nVidia releasing GPL'ed drivers,
> > their video cards would see much improvement in their performance under
> > Linux. So I guess my point is, if people want to buy closed source
> > hardware, they can install the drivers themselves.
> >
>
> Ok I see your point and I totally agree with you. John Carmack of ID
> even said if the source code for drivers were available he would
> take time and optimize each vendors drivers for linux.
>
>
