Am Donnerstag, 17. Dezember 2009 schrieb Kevin Kofler: > > Not releasing any driver would actually have been much better, as > releasing a proprietary driver removes much of the motivation to > write a Free one (due to people like you only thinking of the > short-term gains and not willing to work on improving the > situation, even if they have the required skills). Nouveau would > be much more advanced by now if the proprietary driver didn't > exist. > > > And furthermore, they aren't hindering the nouveau process. > > Only because they have no way to hinder it (other than by > demotivating those developers who don't care about freedom by > continuing support for their proprietary driver, which they do). > > > I know they aren't actively helping it, but you have to remember > > how competitive the graphics card industry is and some of their > > advantage might be the IP in the driver. You can't blame them > > for keeping that secret. > > Yet both of their major competitors released specs, and one of them > (Intel) employs several people to be the primary developers of a > Free driver, the other (AMD's ATI division) at least participates > in the efforts to write a Free driver with at least one full-time > employee. NVidia is the odd one out. > > > Its not like they are promoting a vendor lock in situation. > > LOL, what about those proprietary APIs like CUDA? How's that not > lock-in? > > > I see that nVidia has just released 190-53 and that it appears to > > address some Linux specific concerns. > > ? and demotivate some more people from working on Nouveau. :-( Here you are wrong (in my point of view). Freedom as reclaimed by us gives everyone the right to sell proprietary stuff (as long as it is not forbidden by legal restrictions). If this stuff is the best let the user use it. That is their part of freedom. I don't think that nVidias driver demotivates free driver developer. It is a competitor no more no less. The nVidia driver marks the point (performance and feature wise) the Nouveau developer have to reach once. Yes, I wish nVidia would release their Specs. But it is their right to do not. I can buy other graphic cards. But Intel refused to offer a single card. No one complains about this. > > Thankfully, some people who actually care about freedom are > actively working on Nouveau no matter what NVidia does. But they > would be many more if the proprietary driver didn't exist. An > actively-maintained proprietary driver is not a good thing at all. Yes, thankfully there are developer out there who care about freedom. I use free software whereever possible. I use linux almost exlusively since more than 10 years with free software with some exceptions: - Star Office (today known as openOffice) in the time no office was available - Epson Scanner software (about 8 years ago - the sane driver was broken and could only scan one page between restart) - nVidia driver (since about half a year - I try Nouveau driver every now and then and it is getting better so I hope to switch to Nouveau soon) (Why nVidia? Nowadays it is not that easy to by a passive AGP graphic card). > > Kevin Kofler > Martin
