> from users perspective I can't really get the issue ... If say NVIDIA wants the driver to contain malicious backdoor, open source is not going to stop them.

> from users perspective I can't really get the issue ... If say NVIDIA wants the driver to contain malicious backdoor, open source is not going to stop them. No, but if such a backdoor were discovered, it would be possible to do something about it. The quote from the article in top comment here says it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23944954 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23944954 > Anyways, not all code that runs on your system is open source. Not yet, but it is my goal. If/when that's achieved, I'd also like to run it exclusively on free/libre/open (FLO) hardware. > Why not demand your bootloader manufacturer for open source with the same intensity. My bootloader plays a much smaller role in my computing endeavors than my gpu. And less importantly, as a practical matter, there's many more major motherboard vendors, and few FLO alternatives; whereas both nvidia alternatives (amd, integrated intel) do have FLO drivers.