Bickering Continues About NVIDIA Using DMA-BUF

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Originally Posted by Pallidus

Had I the choice of having a free BIOS, I would have a open source BIOS instead...

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there are systems that are patchable with coreboot. the asrock version of zacate board e350 one as example. Then you think that the today linuxkernel or ubuntu or stuff is free software purely thats not true.
http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html

you see not only ubuntu is not in there but also not debian or fedora. for me thats the distributions thats fit my freedomness-feeling, so to make small compromisses but at least have a clear goal to go the right way. So that I mean in this world if you go completly consequent you end in a hole in the earth and have no pc or other stuff and eat like some nuts and berries from the forest or something. you have to make compromisses but I think its more important to make way less compromisses like most others do, who dont care about freedom and other stuff at all... when they come closer to your views you can go a step further maybe because it gets easier and the gap becomes smaller.

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Originally Posted by blackiwid

there are systems that are patchable with coreboot. the asrock version of zacate board e350 one as example.

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Ethernet still broken: http://tracker.coreboot.org/trac/coreboot/ticket/180

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Originally Posted by Pallidus

Had I the choice of having a free BIOS, I would have a open source BIOS instead... but you see, I was not given that choice for all the motherboards I can think of.. actually I don't even think I saw ANY motherboard with a open bios.


So it's not a matter of choice when it comes to the BIOS.

But I can tell you that apart from the BIOS my favorite laptop is 100% open source software, since it is a centrino platform everything operates 100% out of the box.

I give you this example, if the linux community got behind the new samsung chromebook and acquire it en masse.. and then demanded samsung to make it fully open source (some stuff already is), it would prove to be a great victory for linux.


I now see that steam and nvidia and canonical have the power to kill what linux stands for.

In one swift move canonical can release ubuntu 13.04 with a bunch of 'secret features' and valve will make steam ubuntu only. Then people will flock to ubuntu to play steam games and of course download the best drivers in order to be able to play their games 100% (those would be nvidia's blob as amd sucks).

And there you go, from a fully open source system now you have a system with 'secret features' dialing home to amazon and God knows who else, with corporate drivers playing corporate software.


The death of linux as a bastion for freedom has begun.

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I don't recall Linux even being "a bastion for freedom" or anything. That was (is) GNU. We should not get things confused.
Secret features on Ubuntu 13.04 were not going to be shown before launch, nothing about closed source I can remember. Steam will start specifically for Ubuntu 12.04 for testing, and then will probably move to the other distributions( Source : Valve ).
Maybe we should give up games entirely, since they might perform better with the by the blobs ...
And depending on what you mean be corrupted, Linux is probably long "corrupted" ....

Btw .. People will "flock to Ubuntu". From where? Windows and OS X? Wouldn't that be better? They will have a system with many more free parts and the opportunity to discover other "more free" systems.
If they already use another Linux distro and even more have a "free" system, there's not much reason they will ..


As for the sacrifices mentioned before, let's all installed opensource coreboot instead of closed source BIOS. At worse you'll brick your pc or have not internet. But it's a necessary sacrifice .... Waiting for you to start..!

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Originally Posted by Pallidus

But I can tell you that apart from the BIOS my favorite laptop is 100% open source software, since it is a centrino platform everything operates 100% out of the box.



The death of linux as a bastion for freedom has begun.

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Rubbish. The Intel wifi card in your precious notebook relies on proprietary firmware blobs in the kernel to function. Blobs which Intel has allowed the Linux kernel to redistribute with no cost on the condition that they may not be mocified.

Fully free my foot. Go compile a libre kernel fork or install Ututo / gNewSense / blag and see just how much of the hardware will fail to function. I have personally tested a libre kernel before and the Intel wifi cards will not function at all since all references to the firmware are removed at the source level.


And Linus never ever intended for Linux to be 'free software'; it's only 'free' because he liked GPL v2. The LMKL is very clear on his stand about 'free software'.

building modern hardware cant be done in your garage with 1-2 guys soldering around some metal or something like that. So it has to be bigger movements, it has not to be mainstream but you have to wait to opportunities to get things forward. An easier way but still painfull instead of using your hardware without ethernet ^^ would be to buy such loongson hardware. Its possible now, if you have a few hundret bucks extra and be fine with having lesser speed, buy such stuff.

I wait till they remake their shit in 32nm or so and then I will buy it propably. At least if its not 3x so expensive than something pc-ish.

If I would be rich or have a good payed job maybe even 3x would be ok. but you can go free if you have good money on your site and be fanatic... like rms shows. I am not jelous, and he is maybe not really rich or so, but there are other freedom problems in our world, as example we have and especialy in america thats a big prblem because your social-systems are at least on some points really crap. we have unemployment, we have it since several decades and it grows and grows and grows.

yes is goes up and down a bit if you watch shorter time-spans but in general it grows and grows... so thats normaly great, 99% unemployment would be excelent, because this payed-jobs-unemploymency is really awsome... but we couple without any need income of people to that. So I am one of this unpaid, I work I do release my work but nobody pays for that, so... this retarded system which automaticly pushes all money to the rich people which do not work if they dont work, they dont have to work to get richer and richer, and others do work but get poorer and poorer.

I will not a equaly money system for all... but at least the money for survival and a small morgage have to be free, so that people are able to work at least if you cant think of another live goal to do payed work. that often is also destructive work that hurts people. So again from this point also someone can say I work at Microsoft, and in reallity maybe the only alternative is to get unemployed and die in hunger or at least freeze to death on the street. So yes software-freedom is important but you have to think it as one aspect and if you try to get really free, you ask different questions.

I don't have, nor would I buy, that acer motherboard just so I could coreboot it... that would be a waste.


Your argument about the intel wifi firmware did indeed defeat mine, I had no idea and thought they were open source as their gfx are.


I know there are more important issues at hand like people getting deprived of their freedoms IRL and software freedom seems silly compared to that, I counter with the following point: It is this fucking multi national huge corporations like microsoft or intel that play a key role in the sad state of things that our western consumer societies became.

Any and all, chance you have to stay away from them is a chance you should grasp.

but I see your point, the only option being buying extremely niche and expensive computers from china.




at this stage might as well release a distro with the nvidia proprietary drivers already in it and steam and all sorts of proprietary drivers, I'm sure it would be quite a sucess

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Originally Posted by Pallidus

at this stage might as well release a distro with the nvidia proprietary drivers already in it and steam and all sorts of proprietary drivers, I'm sure it would be quite a sucess

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did happen, not with steam but nvidia and amd drivers, search for knoppix gaming live cd or something like that... but its illigal to do that, its one thing to make it easy for ubuntu that the user can easily self-install a closed source driver or to press both on one iso image and release it for downloading...

but again I understand you and most of your arguemnts are true... I did not know about that nasty firmwares long times too. its kind of a small betrail, because I thought linux is opensource (only). and that gpl forbits to press unfree and free stuff on one cd and especialy that combinations of a kernel which loads or uses closedsource stuff would not be ok... but I was wrong too...


You have to make the right dosage of freedom you can make peace with at least for the midterm... and look out for stuff that goes further even knowledge hinders us for freedom like we see here we both did not know enough to even take aktion to get (more) freedom, because we did not even know that we used closedsource blobs... from evil companies.

I think we have the wrong system so we can either be totaly unsocial or unfree or unemployed and just free to die...

capitalism is good till a point, then you have at least patch it... we try to solve the problems from today with the solutions that brought us this problems... till that does not change... nothing change for good at all...

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Originally Posted by tehehe

Haha yeah. I mean if proprietary vendors can't use this interface then what is even the point of it?

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Ummm... for open-source devs to use it? No?

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Originally Posted by tehehe

Personally I don't wish bad things for Cox. He is great asset. I just think he should be glad that nvidia wants to use MORE open source in their drivers instead of reinventing the wheel behind closed doors.

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Don't you see the ironic double-standard in that remark? Nothing is preventing nVidia from using more open source in their drivers, except that they go to some pains to keep their drivers proprietary. And now they want to still have the privileges that come from being open-source, while actually remaining proprietary.

If nVidea isn't willing to fulfil their side of the bargain (ie. the code-sharing obligations of the GPL) then they aren't allowed to claim the benefits (integrating other people's GPL code, into their software) either. Many parties donated their code under the GPL license terms precisely because they wanted to be sure such private appropriation couldn't happen to their work, code provided to all who were willing to share freely.

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PS: Yeah, it kind of sucks for users who just want to play the latest graphics-heavy games on their Linux PCs, and that's too bad.

PPS: But lets not blame the guys who just want the reasonable, principled, carefully-constructed and fairly agreed-upon deal to be kept -- especially when they don't have any right to change the deal, or any power to change the deal. Even supposing they wanted to (and it's understandable that they wouldn't, when that would arguably undermine a major purpose of their work.

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Originally Posted by D0pamine

proper drivers? module taints kernel!!!!! GNU/Linux gaming is stillborn? i play games no problem!!!! pragmatic? why does X,Y,Z developer have to bend over for a corporation!!! hobbyist? go on say 'Desktop market share' i dare you :P

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Why?

Because many people don't understand the difference between pragmatism and expediency, and think that "pragmatic" and "expedient" are synonyms.

Which is strange, because "expediency" still has a strong negative connotation, while "pragmatism" has a positive one. Less strangely, people don't like to admit they're taking the expedient choice, and so they claim it's just pragmatism -- or even boast about how they're being so pragmatic...

In fact, from a user perspective, the GPL is more often the not actually the truly pragmatic route, because it is conscientiously focused on preserving the freedom of the users (often a.k.a. the "owners" who actually buy the products) to use their own property how they wish to -- rather than preserving the freedom of the vendors to control what people can do with their own property even after they've paid for it.

Some people are more easily distracted by cool new toys than others, and easily persuaded to overlook their own long-term interests for a somewhat faster, easier, "cooler" or more convenient technological gimmick in the short run.

Letting nVidia get it's way in this matter would be the more expedient choice for some users -- in the short run we'd get somewhat easier and smoother drivers for more powerful graphics chips -- but in the long run (heck, even in the medium run) our computing lives would suffer, even if measuring the deterioration might be harder to pin down clearly).

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Change of topic:

But from a Linux kernel developer's perspective, it could be much worse, even in the short run; because they would no longer know (could not know) for sure, precisely what the code in their kernel actually is doing, they wouldn't be able to look into the code, step through it to see where/how things are going wrong, or determine the best way to modify or add functionality. That's why Linux kernel devs decline to debug kernels "tainted" with proprietary drivers. They'd be more like nuclear physicists -- smashing stuff together and hoping to learn something useful from how the debris gets thrown out -- than like software programmers; and that's not a sane way to write or debug or work on complex kernel code... especially if it's your own kernel.

So no one should expect the Linux kernel devs to see letting closed code into the kernel as "pragmatic" -- they're the ones that would actually have to deal with the real consequences, and they know better. For Linux kernel devs, this isn't even "expedient", it's just begging for trouble.

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Originally Posted by Bernard Swiss

So no one should expect the Linux kernel devs to see letting closed code into the kernel as "pragmatic"

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I don't think NVIDIA made such a request though. I think what they asked for was the label "EXPORT_SYMBOL" rather than "EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL" on the DMA-BUF functions, so that they can make invocations on those functions from their driver as I presume they do with other cases. But whether or not there's a legitimate legal difference between these two markers is highly questionable it seems.

However, and I don't know if it's considered pragmatic or something else, but Linus has acknowledged that the Linux ecosystem should make a way for proprietary software, including proprietary drivers, to participate.

The problem I have with your criticism of proprietary software is that you're saying that a software developer such as myself does not have a right to his intellectual property, and that providing a product to an end-user should necessarily entail the developer giving up his IP rights. Whether or not that's truly best for the end-user is questionable, and I think it depends on the software. I do think there are examples where it's clearly superior for the end-user, and other examples where it's inferior. A mix of both open and closed seems to truly be "pragmatic".