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> Every Nvidia and Intel competitor (AMD) is probably already reverse engineering their binary drivers and binary libraries trying to steal their IP, so Intel a

> Every Nvidia and Intel competitor (AMD) is probably already reverse engineering their binary drivers and binary libraries trying to steal their IP, so Intel and Nvidia’s fears are imo justified. If NVIDIA or Intel could easily protect their open source code from being stolen from AMD, the story would be different. Intel's GPU drivers are free software, they even contribute them themselves, same goes for AMD. I think NVIDIA's different because they have the Apple mentality of them being the real innovators, (regardless of fact) and building their internal culture on secrecy, closeness even to other teams within the company etc. I think they consider it as part of their 'coolness factor', together with the CEO being on stage dressed like a rock star from the 80s. The fact that they benefit from Linux massively and that having an open driver would win them massive goodwill is not directly measurable in terms of their balance sheet, at least in the short term, plus it would remove some of the secrecy.

pjmlp 6y ago
They do so by using different teams, and their open source variants always lag behind what their closed source drivers are capable of doing across Windows, Apple and game consoles.
- AsyncAwait 6y ago
  The drivers are decent enough nonetheless. I think having an open driver done by a different team and maybe a bit less optimized is still preferable to not having an official open driver at all.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I used to enjoy my OpenGL 4.1 driver on Radeon HD 6250, which was still short of OpenGL 4.4/DX 11 on Windows, but still quite ok I guess, all it does now with open source drivers is OpenGL 3.3. So no that isn't decent enough, and I only keep it like this, because it is just a little travel laptop that I keep on using until it eventually dies.
    - AsyncAwait 6y ago
      Why even mention a fairly ancient GPU when AMD has really only gotten their act together fairly recently with amdgpu, but that supports Vulkan as I would expect. I don't get this constant obsession with mentioning how 8 years ago this and this on Linux sucked. Yes, it did, things improved considerably since then. If you're only willing to run Linux on ancient, underpowered hardware and then complain about the experience, be my guest, but I think you'd be better served by a Mac. There's a whole class of people who run Linux on shitty little laptops and then compare the experience to their brand new iMac. I guess somewhere there's still the mentality that since one's not paying for Linux, it's not for my serious hardware, only second hand. As much as I'd have liked for AMD to get their shit together sooner, I am glad they eventually did and are improving amdgpu at a decent speed.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        That was just one example, I can provide more up to date ones as well. Indeed, that is why this Linux laptop is the surviving one that still runs Linux on bare metal, everywhere else I just VMs, if at all.

pjmlp 6y ago

They do so by using different teams, and their open source variants always lag behind what their closed source drivers are capable of doing across Windows, Apple and game consoles.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
The drivers are decent enough nonetheless. I think having an open driver done by a different team and maybe a bit less optimized is still preferable to not having an official open driver at all.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I used to enjoy my OpenGL 4.1 driver on Radeon HD 6250, which was still short of OpenGL 4.4/DX 11 on Windows, but still quite ok I guess, all it does now with open source drivers is OpenGL 3.3. So no that isn't decent enough, and I only keep it like this, because it is just a little travel laptop that I keep on using until it eventually dies.
  - AsyncAwait 6y ago
    Why even mention a fairly ancient GPU when AMD has really only gotten their act together fairly recently with amdgpu, but that supports Vulkan as I would expect. I don't get this constant obsession with mentioning how 8 years ago this and this on Linux sucked. Yes, it did, things improved considerably since then. If you're only willing to run Linux on ancient, underpowered hardware and then complain about the experience, be my guest, but I think you'd be better served by a Mac. There's a whole class of people who run Linux on shitty little laptops and then compare the experience to their brand new iMac. I guess somewhere there's still the mentality that since one's not paying for Linux, it's not for my serious hardware, only second hand. As much as I'd have liked for AMD to get their shit together sooner, I am glad they eventually did and are improving amdgpu at a decent speed.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      That was just one example, I can provide more up to date ones as well. Indeed, that is why this Linux laptop is the surviving one that still runs Linux on bare metal, everywhere else I just VMs, if at all.