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Nvidia's “Open-Source Guy” Has Left the Company

110 points by infodroid 10y ago

alekratz 10y ago
Surely there are more people who push for open source at Nvidia?
- tomstockmail 10y ago
  Entirely. Phoronix just likes their clickbait and alarmist headlines.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Not sure why you were downvoted. Phoronix is all about clickbait headlines.
    - tomstockmail 10y ago
      Phoronix has quite the following, unfortunately. Luckily it's banned on reddits /r/linux forum.
compuguy 10y ago
Looks like phronix.com is down....
- joecool1029 10y ago
  I didn't think HN was that much traffic... does Micheal not typically get more than 20 people on the site?
  - JasonSage 10y ago
    HN is a _lot_ of traffic.
    - overcast 10y ago
      Max I ever saw was around 100 simultaneous connections on projects that jumped up on the page. Not sure I would consider that a _lot_ for any reasonable hardware.
      - ekianjo 10y ago
        I have seen up to 300 when you reach somewhere around the top of the page. Still not huge, indeed.
        0x6c6f6c 10y ago
        More likely to be that his websites code is _very_ unoptimized.
- infodroid 10y ago
  It is discussing this post from Alexandre Courbot: https://plus.google.com/+AlexandreCourbot/posts/BdWyfgsfp5J https://plus.google.com/+AlexandreCourbot/posts/BdWyfgsfp5J
- BuildTheRobots 10y ago
  text only cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMNVyNxE6OwJ:https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php%3Fpage%3Dnews_item%26px%3DNVIDIA-Gnu-Leaves&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMNVyNx...
- 5ilv3r 10y ago
  Really odd, since phronix has been on the frontpage of hn hundreds of times before.
tombert 10y ago
I'm not asking this to troll, I'm genuinely confused...why are drivers ever proprietary? Aren't drivers inherently a loss-leader so that a company can sell hardware? Why not always open up the drivers?
- saosebastiao 10y ago
  A big (but not singular) answer to that question is that proprietary drivers are what allows companies like NVidia to price-discriminate, by selling the same hardware but disabling features for lower priced models.
  - Tuna-Fish 10y ago
    No, this was a thing long ago but these days this is done by burning fuses on the GPU, which makes some areas of the chip completely inaccessible.
- 542458 10y ago
  Spitballing here: - Driver source code may contain info that would give hints to upcoming or in-development products and innovations from the company that they'd prefer to keep secret. - Drivers may have features disabled in software, but not in hardware - if you could compile your own, it would effectively overrule this. - Open-sourcing drivers may make it easier for the competition to "copy" innovations and features - "Security" via obfuscation
  - jjoonathan 10y ago
    - Open-sourcing drivers increases surface area for patent-liability (both troll and non-troll)
- kyrra 10y ago
  My guesses: 1) Nvidia and AMD both do per-game optimizations in the drivers themselves. Though my understand is that Nvidia has more resources dedicated to this. They will send 1 or 2 people to the studios of AAA game devs nearer release to help the company optimize their game plus to add "hacks" into their own drivers to work around inefficiencies in those games. If they opened sourced their drivers, that work would be made free to AMD and other drivers. 2) "Benchmark Cheating". Graphics Drivers do lots of optimizations depending on the specific application. I'd wager that this includes popular benchmark apps. 3) Patent lawsuits. There are a massive number of patents around the graphics word. Obscuring how a driver works probably helps protect them somewhat from potential patent litigation.
thomastjeffery 10y ago
Maybe he sees AMDGPU as an opportunity. Drivers should never be proprietary. There are no legitimate reasons for them to be, only sad excuses.
- eropple 10y ago
  > There are no legitimate reasons for them to be, only sad excuses. Are you an IP lawyer? I'm not, but I work with people who are, and they would disagree with you rather strongly with regard to certain cases and certain fields. It's pretty presumptuous to tell people what legal risks they should expose themselves to (and to forestall the tired and obvious, it's great that Intel thinks that they're OK and can open their stuff--but I sure get why others aren't so cavalier).
  - benchaney 10y ago
    "I'm breaking the law, but I don't want to get in trouble" is a sad excuse, not a legitimate reason.
    - emiliobumachar 10y ago
      The current state of patent law is that the only way you can be sure not to infringe on it is to never build anything, ever. In that environment, I can actually sympathize with "I'm breaking the law, but I don't want to get in trouble".
    - mcbits 10y ago
      If it's a "dealing pot" sort of infringement (e.g. against patents that shouldn't exist, but do), then it's a legitimate reason to hide their tracks. If it's a "robbing banks" level of infringement, then it's not.
      - eropple 10y ago
        That, and robbing banks is a violation of criminal law. Patent infringement is a tort. Way different set of concerns.
DArcMattr 10y ago
At the very least, vendors should provide something like a data sheet with all the register information a developer would need to write their own driver. There's no need to give away the recipe to the special sauce.

110 points by infodroid 10y ago

alekratz 10y ago

Surely there are more people who push for open source at Nvidia?

tomstockmail 10y ago
Entirely. Phoronix just likes their clickbait and alarmist headlines.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Not sure why you were downvoted. Phoronix is all about clickbait headlines.
  - tomstockmail 10y ago
    Phoronix has quite the following, unfortunately. Luckily it's banned on reddits /r/linux forum.

compuguy 10y ago

Looks like phronix.com is down....

joecool1029 10y ago
I didn't think HN was that much traffic... does Micheal not typically get more than 20 people on the site?
- JasonSage 10y ago
  HN is a _lot_ of traffic.
  - overcast 10y ago
    Max I ever saw was around 100 simultaneous connections on projects that jumped up on the page. Not sure I would consider that a _lot_ for any reasonable hardware.
    - ekianjo 10y ago
      I have seen up to 300 when you reach somewhere around the top of the page. Still not huge, indeed.
      - 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
        More likely to be that his websites code is _very_ unoptimized.
infodroid 10y ago
It is discussing this post from Alexandre Courbot: https://plus.google.com/+AlexandreCourbot/posts/BdWyfgsfp5J https://plus.google.com/+AlexandreCourbot/posts/BdWyfgsfp5J
BuildTheRobots 10y ago
text only cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMNVyNxE6OwJ:https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php%3Fpage%3Dnews_item%26px%3DNVIDIA-Gnu-Leaves&num=1&hl=en&gl=uk&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:kMNVyNx...
5ilv3r 10y ago
Really odd, since phronix has been on the frontpage of hn hundreds of times before.

tombert 10y ago

I'm not asking this to troll, I'm genuinely confused...why are drivers ever proprietary? Aren't drivers inherently a loss-leader so that a company can sell hardware? Why not always open up the drivers?

saosebastiao 10y ago
A big (but not singular) answer to that question is that proprietary drivers are what allows companies like NVidia to price-discriminate, by selling the same hardware but disabling features for lower priced models.
- Tuna-Fish 10y ago
  No, this was a thing long ago but these days this is done by burning fuses on the GPU, which makes some areas of the chip completely inaccessible.
542458 10y ago
Spitballing here: - Driver source code may contain info that would give hints to upcoming or in-development products and innovations from the company that they'd prefer to keep secret. - Drivers may have features disabled in software, but not in hardware - if you could compile your own, it would effectively overrule this. - Open-sourcing drivers may make it easier for the competition to "copy" innovations and features - "Security" via obfuscation
- jjoonathan 10y ago
  - Open-sourcing drivers increases surface area for patent-liability (both troll and non-troll)
kyrra 10y ago
My guesses: 1) Nvidia and AMD both do per-game optimizations in the drivers themselves. Though my understand is that Nvidia has more resources dedicated to this. They will send 1 or 2 people to the studios of AAA game devs nearer release to help the company optimize their game plus to add "hacks" into their own drivers to work around inefficiencies in those games. If they opened sourced their drivers, that work would be made free to AMD and other drivers. 2) "Benchmark Cheating". Graphics Drivers do lots of optimizations depending on the specific application. I'd wager that this includes popular benchmark apps. 3) Patent lawsuits. There are a massive number of patents around the graphics word. Obscuring how a driver works probably helps protect them somewhat from potential patent litigation.

thomastjeffery 10y ago

Maybe he sees AMDGPU as an opportunity. Drivers should never be proprietary. There are no legitimate reasons for them to be, only sad excuses.

eropple 10y ago
> There are no legitimate reasons for them to be, only sad excuses. Are you an IP lawyer? I'm not, but I work with people who are, and they would disagree with you rather strongly with regard to certain cases and certain fields. It's pretty presumptuous to tell people what legal risks they should expose themselves to (and to forestall the tired and obvious, it's great that Intel thinks that they're OK and can open their stuff--but I sure get why others aren't so cavalier).
- benchaney 10y ago
  "I'm breaking the law, but I don't want to get in trouble" is a sad excuse, not a legitimate reason.
  - emiliobumachar 10y ago
    The current state of patent law is that the only way you can be sure not to infringe on it is to never build anything, ever. In that environment, I can actually sympathize with "I'm breaking the law, but I don't want to get in trouble".
  - mcbits 10y ago
    If it's a "dealing pot" sort of infringement (e.g. against patents that shouldn't exist, but do), then it's a legitimate reason to hide their tracks. If it's a "robbing banks" level of infringement, then it's not.
    - eropple 10y ago
      That, and robbing banks is a violation of criminal law. Patent infringement is a tort. Way different set of concerns.

DArcMattr 10y ago

At the very least, vendors should provide something like a data sheet with all the register information a developer would need to write their own driver. There's no need to give away the recipe to the special sauce.