Open Letter For Open Drivers To NVIDIA

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Open Letter For Open Drivers To NVIDIA

For those interested in seeing official open-source support from NVIDIA or open specifications, there is an open letter for open drivers to NVIDIA at OpenTheBlob.com. With both AMD and Intel now supporting open-source X.Org drivers and releasing specifications/documentation, the community is looking for the same (if not more) from NVIDIA...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjM2Ng

[yoshi314]

hm not bad. just 19 sigs when i last checked, and now almost 200. seems like there are people who don't like nvidia blob, contrary to my belief.

i'm not eligible for voting, though :]

[Michael]

hm not bad. just 19 sigs when i last checked


Must have just been shortly after it launched then :)

[deanjo]

YAUNP (yet another useless nvidia petition)

Really, why do people bother? Nvidia knows that the linux community wants them to open up the specs. These petitions never work.

[Regenwald]

michael, do you know _anything_ about nvidia and their "open source strategy"? or are that just rumours that you have heard of?

[Vadi]

I'm a happy nvidia user. But it wouldn't hurt to open things up.

[sloggerKhan]

Well, I just ordered my first nvidia card, mostly because my laptop's ati card has been a bitch. (I'm building a desktop because my laptop seems to have developed overheating problems after about 2.5 years...)

It's going to be a fanless 8600 gt... I'll see how it works out, I guess.

Hence I now have reason to sign this petition.

[Ex-Cyber]

I don't think this can hurt, but even 100,000 end user signatures on this letter/petition still counts less than one signature from an eVGA/Powercolor/Asus/Gigabyte/MSI exec...

[Vadi]

I got an 8600 gt on my laptop from system76. Absolutely no troubles at all so far...

[deanjo]

This has been done many times before.

http://new.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?nvfoss

http://www.petitiononline.com/hwopennv/petition.html

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nvidia-petition/

http://www.petitiononline.com/skyos/petition.html

http://www.petitiononline.com/nvppclin/petition.html

and on and on and on........


This petition isn't even blog worthy.

[deneb]

This has been done many times before.
...
This petition isn't even blog worthy.
But this petition has a cool new URL ;)
(and already more signatures than those previous petitions)

[_txf_]

It also serves as a reminder that competitors are changing strategy... sooner or later those users are going to shift to competitors.

Petitioning is better than doing nothing and accepting what you're given. It probably wont make much of a difference but its not causing anyone to lose a lot of time over it. Saying "I won't sign it cos it won't make a difference" is a bit silly considering that it only takes 5 min.

[BrianS]

It also serves as a reminder that competitors are changing strategy... sooner or later those users are going to shift to competitors.

Petitioning is better than doing nothing and accepting what you're given. It probably wont make much of a difference but its not causing anyone to lose a lot of time over it. Saying "I won't sign it cos it won't make a difference" is a bit silly considering that it only takes 5 min.

Number 7386 only spent about 2 minutes on it. :-)

(With OpenBSD blob song in head...)


BrianS

[deanjo]

It also serves as a reminder that competitors are changing strategy... sooner or later those users are going to shift to competitors.

Do you really honestly think that Nvidia "forgets" about what their competitors are doing that they need a reminder? Sooner or later people will shift to the competitors ONLY if the competitors start putting out a competitive product. Until ATI/AMD can match performance, stability, and features on a class by class comparison (ie 3870 vs 8800GT) there is little to no pressure for Nvidia to even consider such a move. The corporate dollar that nvidia gets from it's linux derived sales is not going to spend money on a product that is still going through it's toddler stage just so they can get that "warm fuzzy FOSS feeling".

[Svartalf]

Do you really honestly think that Nvidia "forgets" about what their competitors are doing that they need a reminder? Sooner or later people will shift to the competitors ONLY if the competitors start putting out a competitive product. Until ATI/AMD can match performance, stability, and features on a class by class comparison (ie 3870 vs 8800GT) there is little to no pressure for Nvidia to even consider such a move. The corporate dollar that nvidia gets from it's linux derived sales is not going to spend money on a product that is still going through it's toddler stage just so they can get that "warm fuzzy FOSS feeling".

Hate to burst your bubble, deanjo... It's not a "warm fuzzy FOSS feeling" they're going to need to worry about. Being able to have someone audit the drivers as well as the the REST of the OS is going to be VERY important in about 6-12 months from now. AMD's stuff, if it's there will make the cut. NVidia's WON'T for that reason alone.

And, if you think that it won't become an issue, just wait and see.

[deanjo]

Hate to burst your bubble, deanjo... It's not a "warm fuzzy FOSS feeling" they're going to need to worry about. Being able to have someone audit the drivers as well as the the REST of the OS is going to be VERY important in about 6-12 months from now. AMD's stuff, if it's there will make the cut. NVidia's WON'T for that reason alone.

And, if you think that it won't become an issue, just wait and see.

I very much doubt that it will be any issue until a competitor can match Nvidia's offerings. Much like Maya doesn't have to worry about Blender yet and Photoshop still can ignore Gimp and Final Cut Pro has nothing to worry about from it's open source competitors.