NVIDIA Wants To Be A Better Linux Patron

[FuturePilot]

I have not proved anything, you just proved yourself how wrong you are. Have a nice day.

You proved my point about knee-jerk immature comments. Not sure how I proved myself wrong.

[hal2k1]

Would that kind of thing help our image even if we didn't open up our HW?

Keywords.

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"Publish the programming specifications" fits within that constraint. Publishing programming specifications is in fact what chip makers always used to do. That way, engineers making other products could use the chips.

"Publish the programming specifications" is NOT "opening up the hardware". The programming specifications reveal almost nothing of the hardware itself, they merely document the API for interfacing to that hardware.

[ElderSnake]

I like Matthew Garrett's idea. Seems to be the best compromise between both parties if NVIDIA is so desperate to keep their 3D engine bits so secret.

[asdx]

You proved my point about knee-jerk immature comments. Not sure how I proved myself wrong.

Sorry about that, but you were also offending and immature by calling us "zealots". There's nothing about zealotry with this, and I still disagree with your "there's going to have to be compromises" comment. We don't need compromises, we want things to work well for everyone.

[patrik]

That's actually what Matthew Garrett suggested in his reply:

Not exactly. What he suggests is that Nouveau and Nvidia share the Nouveau code. If they don't share it, it wont get into mainline because the kernel doesn't accept shim drivers.

There might also be a few trick in the command submission code of the blob that they don't like to reveal (fencing, reordering, priorities). Also, I think they would have a hard time keeping their "one driver core for all platforms" intact.

It's still a good idea but would require efforts from both Nouveau and Nvidia.

[entropy]

Not exactly. What he suggests is that Nouveau and Nvidia share the Nouveau code. If they don't share it, it wont get into mainline because the kernel doesn't accept shim drivers.
There might also be a few trick in the command submission code of the blob that they don't like to reveal (fencing, reordering, priorities). Also, I think they would have a hard time keeping their "one driver core for all platforms" intact.

Thanks for clarifying this. I wasn't that sure as my post might imply.

I'm not sure what a 'shim driver' is, though. If someone creates a new closed-source DDX for radeon that
interacts with the existing libdrm kernel implementation - would that be a 'shim driver'?
If so, how would the kernel devs be able to reject them? It's userspace like the mesa bits.
And they surely had to stick to the kernel drm part if there is at least one OSS userspace driver that needs it, right?

It's still a good idea but would require efforts from both Nouveau and Nvidia.

It sounds like a major overhaul of both pieces of code.

[Dukenukemx]

Upper-management is still Nvidia no matter how you slice it. Then Nvidia should fire those guys, and get management that will allow to have open source drivers. Unless Nvidia plans to support even Legacy products, there will always be a need for open source drivers.

[asdx]

I agree with Matthew Garrett, and I have a question regarding what he said in his email:

Further, as the industry moves to secure boot, you're going to have
incredible difficulty providing a closed kernel driver. Even if we have
some mechanism for third-party signing, that means you'll have to
provide a pre-compiled kernel module for every kernel you want to
support. It's going to become much less painful for you to move to an
open kernel/closed userspace model.

His email: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pi...ne/000336.html

My question is:

How exactly secure boot is going to break blobs like nvidia? If so, we should really take advantage of things like this to incentive Nvidia to improve the current situation and be more helpful to the Linux community.

[asdx]

Also, I hope that if nvidia decides to work together with nouveau and they have to do some rework in their stacks, I hope nouveau never gets to depend on the nvidia blob in order to function as a stand-alone and open-source driver.

[0xBADCODE]

The best way to help to Linux is obviously to publish datasheets for their GPUs and possibly help those who already working on nouveau. Same goes for SoC's as well. However as for me it looks like if nVIDIA hasn't got it right and rather cares about "restoring their good image" than about actual cooperation, getting things running and doing it in ways convenient for devs, maintainers and (as the result) users as well.

Hey Nvidia. Just take a look how AMD and Intel are doing it for Linux. Unfortunately this implies working on opensource drivers and publishing PDFs.