4 ms·

What's the difference between this and Wine/Proton? I guess Microsoft EULA has similar conditions, if they were enforceable wouldn't Microsoft do the same and s

What's the difference between this and Wine/Proton? I guess Microsoft EULA has similar conditions, if they were enforceable wouldn't Microsoft do the same and send a C&D to Wine devs?

parentheses 3y ago
EULA permits the companies to have grounds to take someone to court. Their choice to prosecute. It's a reserved right more so than one that they use 100%. In this case translating CUDA can allow AMD to chip away at NVidia's market share.
- adastra22 3y ago
  Not if the person being sued never “signed” the EULA.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    Nvidia cares about the people reverse-engineering CUDA, who don't have anything to reverse-engineer unless they actually download the SDK. Of course, when you download the SDK it has an associated license.
    - TehCorwiz 3y ago
      It's also possible to do a clean-room reverse where one group tests the hardware and software and writes specifications and another group who has never seen the hardware or docs then does the implementation. This has been legally tested and protected going back to at least the early 1980s.
      - mandevil 3y ago
        It is possible, but a) it is expensive as hell to get enough engineers whom you can prove in court have no exposure to the original software (most SWE's would get some exposure just naturally in college nowadays, leave alone at any sort of job) and b) CUDA is constantly changing and updating and so you need to have this expensive clean-room process going constantly or else you will fall behind. The most famous case of clean-room reverse engineering is for the original BIOS chips back in the early 1980's, where the chips themselves couldn't change- they were hardware! It's going to be orders of magnitude more difficult to do that for software packages that change regularly.
        TehCorwiz 3y ago
        I disagree on Cuda changing constantly. The hardware is stable once sold and new devices are usually backwards compatible by at least a version or two. The API is also locked down for already deployed versions, can't go pulling the rug from paying customers. However, new versions of both hardware and Cuda do introduce new things that'll need addressed. I don't think it's much of a moving target though.
        Me1000 3y ago
        > it is expensive as hell Probably, but Nvidia's market cap suggests there's more than $2 trillion in reasons to front that expense.
bri3d 3y ago
This isn't NV saying "you can't make ZLUDA," it's NV saying "you can't run our libraries like cuDNN, cuBLAS, cuBN on non-NV hardware." While this kind of restriction still isn't legally cut and dry, it does come with tons of precedent, from IBM banning the use of their mainframe OSes in emulation to Apple only licensing OSX for use on Apple hardware.
- TehCorwiz 3y ago
  I think this is a more nuanced point that just running "CUDA software" which is what's been commonly discussed. Nvidia is licensing their shared libraries in such a way that you can only run then on their hardware. It's notable however, that both of the examples you give are for Operating Systems, rather than a library which is part of a larger work. Do you know of an example of a single application or library being hardware locked? the only instance I can think of off the top of my head are the old Dos versions of Autocad which had a physical dongle. But even that was DRM and not just an EULA restriction. Actually, that might be an interesting direction for them to go. Include some key in Nvidia hardware which the library validates. Then they'd get DMCA protection for their DRM.
  - bri3d 3y ago
    Hardware-dongle DRM was the default licensing model in the 90s for any kind of enterprise-type software. Pretty much all audio and video production and editing software for many years, and even today. C compilers, for many years, as well. PhysX for awhile. Native Instruments stuff. Saleae logic analyzer software. Another message in this thread reminded me, too, of the Google Play frameworks on Android, which are also a very good analogy - Google ship these libraries licensed for use only on approved phones.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    > old Dos versions of Autocad which had a physical dongle. Those didn't go away in the industry, though AutoCAD moved away from them. Resolume (professional VJ software) and Avid (professional video editing software) still have hardware dongles. Arguably so does Davinci, theirs are just much bigger ;). progeCAD (AutoCAD compatible CAD program) also has USB protection dongles available as a license option.

What's the difference between this and Wine/Proton? I guess Microsoft EULA has similar conditions, if they were enforceable wouldn't Microsoft do the same and send a C&D to Wine devs?

parentheses 3y ago

EULA permits the companies to have grounds to take someone to court. Their choice to prosecute. It's a reserved right more so than one that they use 100%. In this case translating CUDA can allow AMD to chip away at NVidia's market share.

adastra22 3y ago
Not if the person being sued never “signed” the EULA.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- LoganDark 3y ago
  Nvidia cares about the people reverse-engineering CUDA, who don't have anything to reverse-engineer unless they actually download the SDK. Of course, when you download the SDK it has an associated license.
  - TehCorwiz 3y ago
    It's also possible to do a clean-room reverse where one group tests the hardware and software and writes specifications and another group who has never seen the hardware or docs then does the implementation. This has been legally tested and protected going back to at least the early 1980s.
    - mandevil 3y ago
      It is possible, but a) it is expensive as hell to get enough engineers whom you can prove in court have no exposure to the original software (most SWE's would get some exposure just naturally in college nowadays, leave alone at any sort of job) and b) CUDA is constantly changing and updating and so you need to have this expensive clean-room process going constantly or else you will fall behind. The most famous case of clean-room reverse engineering is for the original BIOS chips back in the early 1980's, where the chips themselves couldn't change- they were hardware! It's going to be orders of magnitude more difficult to do that for software packages that change regularly.
      - TehCorwiz 3y ago
        I disagree on Cuda changing constantly. The hardware is stable once sold and new devices are usually backwards compatible by at least a version or two. The API is also locked down for already deployed versions, can't go pulling the rug from paying customers. However, new versions of both hardware and Cuda do introduce new things that'll need addressed. I don't think it's much of a moving target though.
      - Me1000 3y ago
        > it is expensive as hell Probably, but Nvidia's market cap suggests there's more than $2 trillion in reasons to front that expense.

bri3d 3y ago

This isn't NV saying "you can't make ZLUDA," it's NV saying "you can't run our libraries like cuDNN, cuBLAS, cuBN on non-NV hardware." While this kind of restriction still isn't legally cut and dry, it does come with tons of precedent, from IBM banning the use of their mainframe OSes in emulation to Apple only licensing OSX for use on Apple hardware.

TehCorwiz 3y ago
I think this is a more nuanced point that just running "CUDA software" which is what's been commonly discussed. Nvidia is licensing their shared libraries in such a way that you can only run then on their hardware. It's notable however, that both of the examples you give are for Operating Systems, rather than a library which is part of a larger work. Do you know of an example of a single application or library being hardware locked? the only instance I can think of off the top of my head are the old Dos versions of Autocad which had a physical dongle. But even that was DRM and not just an EULA restriction. Actually, that might be an interesting direction for them to go. Include some key in Nvidia hardware which the library validates. Then they'd get DMCA protection for their DRM.
- bri3d 3y ago
  Hardware-dongle DRM was the default licensing model in the 90s for any kind of enterprise-type software. Pretty much all audio and video production and editing software for many years, and even today. C compilers, for many years, as well. PhysX for awhile. Native Instruments stuff. Saleae logic analyzer software. Another message in this thread reminded me, too, of the Google Play frameworks on Android, which are also a very good analogy - Google ship these libraries licensed for use only on approved phones.
- fragmede 3y ago
  > old Dos versions of Autocad which had a physical dongle. Those didn't go away in the industry, though AutoCAD moved away from them. Resolume (professional VJ software) and Avid (professional video editing software) still have hardware dongles. Arguably so does Davinci, theirs are just much bigger ;). progeCAD (AutoCAD compatible CAD program) also has USB protection dongles available as a license option.