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> x86 is also proprietary technology. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence? AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology. Nouveau

> x86 is also proprietary technology. Should Intel be able to sue AMD out of existence? AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology. Nouveau is different, you are still buying Nvidia cards just running an open source driver. Nvidia doesn't make money on their drivers, they make money on the graphics cards. Similar situation to Ruffle, Adobe never charged for the end user to download flash. It was free. Ruffle is an alternative to that. Also it is worth mentioning that flash is all but dead and this really just keeps it breathing. While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it.

pcwalton 3y ago
> AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology. AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that! > While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it. NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret. More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model. The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent implementation. SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go after Samba. Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_archite...
- nerdjon 3y ago
  > AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that! OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know why you even mentioned it in the first place. > NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret. Any articles to back that up? Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History > Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this. Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
  - pcwalton 3y ago
    > OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. AMD is only fine because Intel wasn't able to sue them out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen today. > Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents NVIDIA only started publishing documents because Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't rational moves on their part, but big conservative Japanese companies have never been known to be particularly adaptable. > Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim. I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1]. Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of restrictions in its EULA. [1]: https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene_fbx/encode_bin.py#L30 https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene...

pcwalton 3y ago

> AMD has a perpetual license from Intel to use the technology. AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that! > While both companies probably could make an argument to argue for a take down of both, they have no incentive to do it. NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret. More examples: JavaScript was proprietary technology at the time. The fact that it was specific to Netscape browsers absolutely benefited Netscape's business model. The existence of Chrome depends on the fact that Netscape had no grounds to go after Microsoft for an independent implementation. SMB is a proprietary Microsoft technology. '90s Microsoft would definitely have preferred to keep that specific to Windows in order to sell more Windows licenses. It's good for the industry that Microsoft never felt they could go after Samba. Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD#IBM_PC_and_the_x86_archite...

nerdjon 3y ago
> AMD only managed to negotiate that because Intel lost in arbitration [1]. Intel's preferred option was always to eliminate AMD entirely. It's good for us consumers that they didn't succeed in that! OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. If you knew that I don't know why you even mentioned it in the first place. > NVIDIA absolutely has an incentive to get rid of Nouveau. Its existence discloses IP (their GPU inner workings) that they would prefer to keep secret. Any articles to back that up? Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)#History > Another fun one: The FBX file format, which Autodesk makes money on through Maya, has a half-hearted attempt at DRM in it to limit it to approved Autodesk licensees. Blender's FBX exporter breaks it with a pass-the-hash attack. Get rid of that and Blender can no longer talk to Unity. Obviously, the entire industry benefits from the fact that Autodesk can't go after Blender for this. Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim.
- pcwalton 3y ago
  > OK? regardless of why or how it happened, it happened and it means that AMD is fine. AMD is only fine because Intel wasn't able to sue them out of existence. If Intel had managed to do in the 90s what Nintendo did to Yuzu just now, there'd be no Ryzen today. > Seems counter to Nvidia offering support in publishing documents NVIDIA only started publishing documents because Nouveau's success in reverse engineering meant that it was pointless trying to pretend that the genie could be put back in the bottle. Nintendo undoubtedly knows this too; lawsuits like this in 2024 ultimately aren't rational moves on their part, but big conservative Japanese companies have never been known to be particularly adaptable. > Again would love an article on this. I can't find anything backing up that this ever happened. Not only on Audodesk's website do they mention third party software but they have an SDK for this file format for others to use. While blender does in fact not use that SDK, and the format is proprietary, I can't find anything backing up what you claim. I found it myself when I was documenting the FBX file format (which I eventually gave up on because it was too horrifying of a format to motivate continuing) [1]. Blender calls it "CRC rules", but I think it's actually an attempt to lock non-licensees out. The SDK is closed-source, proprietary, and comes with a whole bunch of restrictions in its EULA. [1]: https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene_fbx/encode_bin.py#L30 https://github.com/blender/blender-addons/blob/main/io_scene...