On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 at 10:32:03AM +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote: > James Ogley wrote: > >> I agree, this is their problem, not ours. They know exactly what they > >> must do to solve this issue, there is nothing that we can do. > > > > Greg, are you calling on nVidia to GPL their driver code? If so, have > > you contacted them directly and is there a formal way in which members > > of the community can assist? > > Back in 1998, NVidia forced the XFree86 developers to obfuscate their > code and the situation has not improved till then. See the following > post for the details: http://airlied.livejournal.com/2006/10/12/ > > Relicensing of the NVidia display driver code under the GPL is not > going to happen (they may not own the code completely), but at least > it would be nice if they didn't actively hinder development. Similar > situation exists with ATI. > > Greg has repeatedly made clear that binary only kernel modules are > a license violation. ATI/NVidia can't/don't want to open the sources > of their drivers. So the only thing we can hope for is that the > unavailability of binary only kernel modules will be painful enough > to get more developers involved with the reverse engineered open > source drivers. > > How can the community assist? > * Test the open source graphics drivers and report bugs > * Write HOWTOs for these drivers > * Encourage/nudge NVidia/ATI to make specifications available to > developers (optionally under NDA with source code release agreement) > * (Developers only:) Help reverse engineering closed source drivers > > Most reverse engineering/driver development projects have only 2-5 > developers although literally millions of people benefit from their > work. For example, the NVidia nforce network driver (forcedeth) was > created by three people (two for reverse engineering, one for writing > the new driver) and I (as part of that team) would sometimes have > killed to get feedback from more users. For the sake of such teams, > get involved and help them as good as you can.
Thanks for heading this issue in a constructive direction. Could you add some pointers to the reversed engineer driver for NVIDIA GPUs? I possibly add it to 10.2 as optional driver for testing purposes. Best regards, Stefan Public Key available ------------------------------------------------------ Stefan Dirsch (Res. & Dev.) SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Tel: 0911-740 53 0 Maxfeldstraße 5 FAX: 0911-740 53 479 D-90409 Nürnberg http://www.suse.de Germany ------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
