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

[bug77]

I'm a bit hopeful that nvidia might be planning to make an official open source driver, or support nouveau development officially.

https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules

Out of tree and only supports recent GPUs. But it's getting there.

[EphemeralEft]

That seems like a claim that needs proof. They have a wide and varied history that is well documented. Claiming that nVidia wants a good open source driver for their enterprise customers sounds asinine to me... Every move they've ever made contradicts that intention.

I don't think they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, it's just that a functional open-source driver is currently in their best interest. I've heard that a lot of enterprise customers were pushing Nvidia for an open-source driver, and if Nvidia didn't support that, then many of those customers would have switched to AMD.

I suspect Nvidia will drop the open-source driver as soon as they can (because they fundamentally don't want one), but the open-source license means that we can keep their contributions and thus can only gain from this.

[bug77]

Mesa is much older. First release was in 1995. I used it on some Unix workstation but to this time it was software only. So I think it is even older than the NVidia OpenGL driver.

It's why I've said it was "on the drawing board". There was something back then, but graphics drivers were a total mess at the time.

[duby229]

ZLUDA is so awesome that Intel and AMD gave up on funding it. Real threat, there.

The threat to AMD and Intel is nVidia. It's an actual legal matter. The bottom line is nVidia would win that lawsuit. Itel or AMD could pay to develop it all they want but they could not release it without nVidia suing them for tens of billions of dollars.

[duby229]

I don't think they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts, it's just that a functional open-source driver is currently in their best interest. I've heard that a lot of enterprise customers were pushing Nvidia for an open-source driver, and if Nvidia didn't support that, then many of those customers would have switched to AMD.

I suspect Nvidia will drop the open-source driver as soon as they can (because they fundamentally don't want one), but the open-source license means that we can keep their contributions and thus can only gain from this.

And yet what they recently did with the Cuda EULA after Zluda released contradicts that. Even if their customers did push them to an open source driver, it won't support Cuda. At bare minimum it won't be for their HPC or AI customers, which is what they care about most.

[timofonic]

I still think what Linus said with the middle finger.

This is like with Miguel de Icaza, Daniel Robbins, Lennart Poettering, etc. But with green color.

I really hope AMD rises up and makes someday ROCm not suck, supporting ALL consumer GPUs, better performance and a richer ecosystem than CUDA. They need a higher army of software developers and engineers for that. A man can dream.

[anarki2]

How is that even legally allowed? Leakage is bound to happen.

[Indomitable]

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.

[duby229]

How is that even legally allowed? Leakage is bound to happen.

It's only legal so long as his exposure is carefully documented. Even talking to someone that saw it about it exposes him. It's tenuous and there is plenty of legal gray area.

[mrg666]

ZLUDA is so awesome that Intel and AMD gave up on funding it. Real threat, there.

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

Real theat, there