Former Nouveau Lead Developer Joins NVIDIA, Continues Working On Open-Source Driver

[rmfx]

I think the GPU graphical part becomes less and less essential and interesting for Nvidia.
AI and compute are much higher priorities and interest for them from now on.
That's why they might become less and less horrible with opening their tech for display drivers.

[Noitatsidem]

If Nvidia actually starts to become FOSS-friendly AMD is dead on arrival. AMD's ace up its sleeve has always been its embrace of FOSS, they lose a lot of the value proposition if nvidia stops being toxic to the ecosystem.

[Cmdr_Zod]

I'm interested in only one thing. The hell will my old card ever work with Nouveau like it does with the Nvidia driver? If so, I continue to bless him.

However, I don't think anyone will do it anymore. Probably because of the license.
So all you have to do is buy a new card.

I went down that route years ago (ok, it was a used new card), and after being burned by very low quality ATI drivers in the past, I can tell that since many years, AMD provides a pretty decent "out of the box"-experience. Unless your card isn't to new for your distribution, you just plug it in, make sure you have the non-free-firmware from AMD loaded, and it will run flawless. Now I'm sitting on a bunch of useless, worthless old Nvidia-Cards.
Of course, If you need Nvidia-specific features like CUDA, you are on your own. Otherwise, switch to AMD (or maybe Intel, although I have no experience with their add-in-cards myself).

[Iksf]

I think they're just so drunk on AI money they can't even be bothered being evil


The fights of NVIDIA from two trillion dollars ago probably don't feel too important

[RejectModernity]

ZLUDE is so awesome that Nvidia changed licensing to ban using it. And, I have it.

Real theat, there

Smells like monopolistic behavior. EU and US should look into this.

[mrg666]

Smells like monopolistic behavior. EU and US should look into this.

Hopefully!

[duby229]

Smells like monopolistic behavior. EU and US should look into this.

I don't think nVidia's behavior seems monopolistic. What they do is called cross subsidization, which could be illegal in some scenarios, but I don't think it is in this case.

[timofonic]

I don't think nVidia's behavior seems monopolistic. What they do is called cross subsidization, which could be illegal in some scenarios, but I don't think it is in this case.

I have a different POV, but I'm european...

[mdedetrich]

Their main given reason for keeping the driver closed is because they wanted feature parity with the windows driver (which was always bullshit because it's never had that

This isn't due to a lack of trying but rather Linux being behind Windows in the areas where there isn't parity OR providing feature parity would involve having to modify they kernel which is a no go to begin with unless you want NVidia force their own version of Linux kernel as well.

[mdedetrich]

The fact that he is working for Nvidia doesn't mean that he has access to the driver source code. You don't know his contract or working environment. The other point is that he may not have access to the code, but may have access to internal schematics or documentation which can be used.

I can't believe so many Phoronix "wise guys" have missed this. NVidia could have easily hired him in a separate department that has zero access to any of the source code for the binary drivers and if there are any legal issues its NVidia shooting its own foot then since hes employed there.