As Alan Cox pointed out: the difference is making it more explicit what the license is, so that nobody can claim that they didn't know/understand. A judge/jury might be understanding about "sorry, I didn't see the LICENSE file among those thousands of other files", but they would be less understanding if the GPL was pushed into your face...
Again, nVIDIA doesn't provide drivers for this platform because of the irrelevant 1% that linux makes up in the consumer market or because they like the philosophy or platform.
They provide it because of companies using linux for different kinds of vectorial computing (be it graphical or physics ... ever heard of NASA, Gas or Oil companies "accelerating" calculus through the GPU? there you have it)
THIS, gentlemen ... is the VERY reason they make drivers for linux → http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_consultants.html
And by mere accident they drop the drivers to the public so they can get some free (as in price) testing of the drivers (and, as a "payment" for that, they kinda give support for some desktop applications)
Licking boots or not, nVIDIA has no choice other than keep providing drivers not because of the community ... again, it's because of the big money that they would loss to AMD if they ever dare to not provide drivers for those companies.
So, nVIDIA ... if you wanna keep making money from this platform? you'll have to play by the rules of it
Regards.
This forum really needs some moderators
When I read this thread I feel like I am using lsd or something? Rofl, the Opensource guys are now the fanatics? And the freesoftware guys? what are there terrorists? Rofl, Linus who is fine that his kernel are used for sharks with lasers from evil people to illustrate his prakticality with the lisense and is cool with using closed source even has no big problems when his kernel gets violated 999 of 1000 times, but now because they drive it to far, now he is the fanatic rofl. Such stupid stuff can only say a windows user who should never left it.
If its the technical points that drive you to linux, just use apple-os. is it noticable worse technicaly? No some would even say its better. Its a better field for closedsource companies. Or use chrome-os or something like that. I dont get it.
And this argument, that most linux developers (you just mean here only the kernel so just install the kernel and show me how useful it is) are developed by companies. And that they would not care about freedom, they dont care about it directly maybe, a company cant care about anything anyway because its no person, even some trolls invented such retardness in america someday.
But they care because they make money because of that, do you think redhat would sell one copy of its distros and support if they went away to closedsource/bsd like mixture, which would become more and more closed source.
It has a reason why linux is so popular and why so many companies support it now. If users and developer would be more happy with a bsd lisense, why is bsd not that popular and well supported? Why? Just because the many many desktop users care so much about their freedom, no but the developers do.
"Linux Desktop would be dead" like its dead in the last 10 years? I can live good with that dead desktop as long as its very good and I can use it, I dont care if 95% of the other users use windows or macosx. And why would linux be dead shure much users would not come to linux who have nvidia cards. But the wine devs would then work more in the direction to use the catalyst driver better and the free ones. So if you are minded like you who dont care about freedom at all not even a bit in this very compromised way opensource "non-fanatic" guys do and are fanatic against-freedom like you, you can buy a amd card next time and use that. And if thats to bad for you wth do you not use macosx? are the 50 bucks to much for you or what? If its gaming what you wand just use windows, nobody cares about that, if you violate your own freedom and you become a product of a company. Linus is one of the biggest critic of Stallman so to say he is a fanatic because he cares to much about freedom is just mushroom-world I should take some drugs to understand you better.
There are some programms that give you multi-display or shure you can get a better console if you want but I have a feeling you dont use that much in linux and if so not because you like it ^^.
You can even install cygwin. or some themes to make the look of windows. and be happy stop trolling use windows nobody will miss you.