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> 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 h

by 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.

by shmerl 6y ago

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.