5 ms·

I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. They have nothing to lose and so much to gai

by dtx1 6y ago

I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. They have nothing to lose and so much to gain. Any SBC, Phone, Notebook will be easier to sell if it can run a mainline kernel. Android Updates will become much less of a problem and just the sheer amount of free QA work in form of bugtracker items should be well worth the effort. I do hope nvidia starts to realize this aswell and makes their drivers less closed and annoying to use on linux. I suspect the issue is a little bit of licensing and a lot of "management" and people that think that "proprietary" is a good thing.

shmerl 6y ago
> I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. It could be market manipulation. If you have an open driver, you can use the hardware any way you want. If the only well performing or functional driver is a blob, they can decide to charge you for using specific features. Like with some enterprise use cases and etc.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs.
  - shmerl 6y ago
    > Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. Yep, that's my guess exactly why they are such jerks and hinder Nouveau reclocking. > And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons.
    - izacus 6y ago
      > Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons. This is complete nonsense - Stadia is a gaming platform, what does it have to do with compute power provided by nVidia's CUDA? Those are completely different, non-interchangeable, usecases provided by completely different products.
      - shmerl 6y ago
        Google and Amazon have more than enough resources to avoid CUDA altogether if they wanted to. Basically, they don't need Nvidia just because of their lock-in shenanigans and if open driver is something beneficial for them.
  - ndesaulniers 6y ago
    > Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs. Google builds their own Mali driver? That's news to me, and I work on Android's kernel team!
- devit 6y ago
  You can do that in hardware in most cases. Embed a unique serial number and only enable a feature if the driver passes a cryptographically signed message stating that the serial number has paid for the feature (and then sell the message data on your website).
  - shmerl 6y ago
    They could, but it's a bigger hassle than slapping some artificial restriction on the blob.
josteink 6y ago
> Any SBC, Phone, Notebook will be easier to sell if it can run a mainline kernel. I’m pretty sure that’s only a convincing argument to a very small market segment. And I say that as someone who has bought a PinePhone.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Being able to run a mainline kernel means being able to receive updates indefinitely, and being able to run any Linux derivative that you want, not just Android. When I recommend hardware, I recommend hardware that will have a long life. Lately, recommending phones and tablets has been tough, because only certain manufacturers and models guarantee software updates, and then only for a small window of time. After that, you're expected to upgrade even if your phone or tablet works perfectly fine. Hardware that can run a mainline kernel might change that, however.
  - ndesaulniers 6y ago
    > Being able to run a mainline kernel means being able to receive updates indefinitely I wouldn't say indefinitely. Hardware that runs Linux today, mainline or not, is not guaranteed to continue to run newer kernel releases. Drivers and even whole architectures do get dropped from the tree, though they get reverted if anyone actually notices and still cares about such support. While indefinite sounds nice, it turns out that indefinite support is not quite what people actually want in practice, even if they exclaim otherwise. Typically, because then they're responsible for maintenance, and the common response there is "no thanks." I'm all for getting everything upstream though!
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > I wouldn't say indefinitely I mean that indefinite updates are an ability enabled by being able to run a mainline kernel. Without a mainline kernel, there is no ability for someone to keep their hardware updated should they so choose. It's off the table entirely.
- hajile 6y ago
stefan_ 6y ago
At this point, with Lima and Panfrost in the tree, there is no more opportunity for an official ARM driver to be merged. They are locked out.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. Drivers get replaced wholesale by more worthy alternatives from time to time.
thrwway08930 6y ago
It was almost exclusively out of fear of being sued by some troll for patent infringement.

by dtx1 6y ago

shmerl 6y ago

> I still don't understand the reluctance to get their drivers into the mainline kernel under an open source license. It could be market manipulation. If you have an open driver, you can use the hardware any way you want. If the only well performing or functional driver is a blob, they can decide to charge you for using specific features. Like with some enterprise use cases and etc.

londons_explore 6y ago
Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs.
- shmerl 6y ago
  > Nvidia has done very well financially out of preventing use of consumer graphics cards being used in datacenters through licensing restrictions. An open source driver eats into that. Yep, that's my guess exactly why they are such jerks and hinder Nouveau reclocking. > And remember, Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons.
  - izacus 6y ago
    > Google or Amazon don't need Nvidia. Google already went with AMD for Stadia, and they actually mentioned open driver as one of the major reasons. This is complete nonsense - Stadia is a gaming platform, what does it have to do with compute power provided by nVidia's CUDA? Those are completely different, non-interchangeable, usecases provided by completely different products.
    - shmerl 6y ago
      Google and Amazon have more than enough resources to avoid CUDA altogether if they wanted to. Basically, they don't need Nvidia just because of their lock-in shenanigans and if open driver is something beneficial for them.
- ndesaulniers 6y ago
  > Google/Amazon don't even need a complete working opensource driver - even a rough skeleton that reveals enough of the inner workings of the hardware is sufficient for them to build their own driver and save $Millions in licensing costs. Google builds their own Mali driver? That's news to me, and I work on Android's kernel team!
devit 6y ago
You can do that in hardware in most cases. Embed a unique serial number and only enable a feature if the driver passes a cryptographically signed message stating that the serial number has paid for the feature (and then sell the message data on your website).
- shmerl 6y ago
  They could, but it's a bigger hassle than slapping some artificial restriction on the blob.

josteink 6y ago

> Any SBC, Phone, Notebook will be easier to sell if it can run a mainline kernel. I’m pretty sure that’s only a convincing argument to a very small market segment. And I say that as someone who has bought a PinePhone.

heavyset_go 6y ago
Being able to run a mainline kernel means being able to receive updates indefinitely, and being able to run any Linux derivative that you want, not just Android. When I recommend hardware, I recommend hardware that will have a long life. Lately, recommending phones and tablets has been tough, because only certain manufacturers and models guarantee software updates, and then only for a small window of time. After that, you're expected to upgrade even if your phone or tablet works perfectly fine. Hardware that can run a mainline kernel might change that, however.
- ndesaulniers 6y ago
  > Being able to run a mainline kernel means being able to receive updates indefinitely I wouldn't say indefinitely. Hardware that runs Linux today, mainline or not, is not guaranteed to continue to run newer kernel releases. Drivers and even whole architectures do get dropped from the tree, though they get reverted if anyone actually notices and still cares about such support. While indefinite sounds nice, it turns out that indefinite support is not quite what people actually want in practice, even if they exclaim otherwise. Typically, because then they're responsible for maintenance, and the common response there is "no thanks." I'm all for getting everything upstream though!
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > I wouldn't say indefinitely I mean that indefinite updates are an ability enabled by being able to run a mainline kernel. Without a mainline kernel, there is no ability for someone to keep their hardware updated should they so choose. It's off the table entirely.
hajile 6y ago

stefan_ 6y ago

At this point, with Lima and Panfrost in the tree, there is no more opportunity for an official ARM driver to be merged. They are locked out.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. Drivers get replaced wholesale by more worthy alternatives from time to time.

thrwway08930 6y ago

It was almost exclusively out of fear of being sued by some troll for patent infringement.