In specific; NVidia, as well as ATI and quite a number of hardware manufacturers; don't necessarily own all of the technology and/or methods used to make their latest toys. What they own in the main is their own technology, and a license and/or contract with the owners of any other included technology, to use that other proprietary technology to make a blended whole.
Quite. If nVidia wholly owned their drivers, I imagine they'd make them open source. As a hardware company, they have nothing to lose and a lot to gain (e.g. a bunch of unpaid hackers improving their drivers).
Since download editions are usually (always with Mandrake, others?) released under the GPL that means these items are not allowed to be used. It's a matter of licensing and permissions; and has nothing to do with "Free" as in no cost. It means the owner(s) of the technology or architecture have reserved exclusive rights to their own property or technology under a proprietary Copyright, and if you want to use it you have to agree to their terms.
Exactly. If people think Mandrake are a bit prissy about the GPL thing, remember that for years Debian refused to include KDE because the Qt widgets weren't 100% Free Software.
Sir Robin
-- "Certitude is possible for those who only own one encyclopedia." - Robert Anton Wilson
Robin Turner IDMYO Bilkent Univeritesi Ankara 06533 Turkey
www.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin
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