Nvidia Wants to Remove Some GPL From Linux Kernel Code
The company's Robert Morell submitted a patch to remove the GPL license from the dma buffer interface in the Linux kernel so it can be used in Nvidia's driver. Not everybody is happy, especially Alan Cox, who has been involved in Linux development since 1991 and was most influential when he maintained the version 2.2 of the Linux kernel.
Cox unmistakably told Morell that he and "many others" are not happy with the idea of combining proprietary and GPL code. Cox declined to accept Morell's patch. The argument appears to be stuck at this time as words started flying and Cox told Morell that a patch acceptance will have to get the confirmation of all rightsholders of the code, some of apparently include Red Hat and Intel. The developer left Morell with the thought to get those confirmations via attorneys.
If it is up to Cox, it appears to be rather unlikely that Nvidia will get anywhere without making substantial concessions. However, he also noted that he will not fight tooth and nail either: "I also have better things to do with life than sue Nvidia and start an all out copyright and patent war in Linuxspace," he wrote. "It's simple enough. If Nvidia think their code is not derivative then why do they care about the _GPL being significant ?"
Morell, however, has not given up yet: "My intention is not to steal any code from the kernel or change any licenses," he posted on the discussion thread. "The goal here is to allow interoperation between drivers. […] I believe that the developers and maintainers of dma-buf have provided the needed signoff, both in person and in this thread. If there are any objections from that group, I'm happy to discuss any changes necessary to get this merged."
Expect this discussion to last for some time and don't expect this discussion to improve the relationship between Nvidia and the Linux developer community.
Because it's fall and it's cold out?
if the drivers go open, wouldnt you be able to code a work around to get cuda and physx up and going on an amd card?
I want open drivers (although I don't care about CUDA or Physx), but I was more worried about nvidia starting a pissing match that winds up with them abandoning Linux support after they get told off. This is why I'm worried nvidia will screw this up for me.
Nvidia sells hardware, not drivers, so releasing programming info for the GPUs doesn't cost them anything. Video development with Nvidia devices is slow because only Nvidia has the info. This also means that when older devices are no longer supported by Nvidia, they can't easily be supported by anyone else either. This is a significant problem with laptops because the GPUs are normally not changeable.
if you dont care about phys or cuda, is there any reason to stick with nvidia?
I'll admit it's been a few years since I tried, but I've always had issues with ATI/AMD cards in Debian (with both open and closed source drivers) Linux. they either don't work at all, don't work right, or are extremely slow and have limited functionality. Every time I've used Nvidia in Linux they have just worked, even if it was a proprietary driver.
Nothing is more frustrating that spending hundreds of dollars on a videocard and no matter what you do it only works as well as some intel chipset on a motherboard.
Linus is a raging nerdboy. Linux wants nothing more than to get some market share. . . how much of the market will they hold without Nvidia? 46.7% of all steam users won't be using Linux for games, then. Oh well Linux blows anyways.
Drivers contain: 3rd party licensed IP and trade secrets such as details on how the architecture works, as well as algorithms.
Look at the games: drivers update can boost a game's performance significantly (not SLI). Just updating the driver, using the same card. It is a good example of how important the driver is.
Another example: Quadro vs GeForce vs Tesla: virtually the same hardware, but the cost difference is due to the work needed to get the drivers developed.
Graphics cards are much more about the driver then the hardware.
why should Nvidia have to bow to any one if they don't want to sell more product to users of that particular system?
it is Nvidia's right to protect their particular efforts and flair of their products. faced with the competition from intel and amd i can understand, but faced with the effort by microsoft and valve to control gaming and other applications that require the need for their dedicated video card it would be prudent to expand their horizons considerably than to continue blindly down the path laid out for their future controlled by microsoft or valve.
something majorly proprietary must be involved for them to hold back like this.
Wow. Almost your entire assertion is false. Nvidia competes with AMD, Intel and others and spends large amounts of money optimizing their drivers to remain competitive. Lots of manufacturers have the same attitude not just Nvidia. Heck the full driver set on Windows is 150MB and has gone through thousands of revisions. They finally start spending money on US with more development and support and boom lots of people start dumping on them. Intolerance has crushed us for years and we would be much further along without this mess.
Actually I'm more impressed how people, like you, comment on issues they don't have clue about. The current issue is not about opening their drivers. Current issue is about nVidia's refusal, for years, to provide proper support of their hardware under Linux, refusal to provide documentation to the kernel developers in order to allow development of open source drivers for their hardware, but now when kernel developers developed feature of the kernel that could make nVidia's life easier they want to use it. No wonder why some of the kernel developers are upset about it.