GPL concerns halt Kororaa live CD (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

GPL concerns halt Kororaa live CD (NewsForge)

Posted May 16, 2006 3:26 UTC (Tue) by hofhansl (guest, #21652)
In reply to: GPL concerns halt Kororaa live CD (NewsForge) by einstein
Parent article: GPL concerns halt Kororaa live CD (NewsForge)

But we are in *no* position to demand that nvidia open source their drivers, and it's incredibly inappropriate for us to give them grief over the excellent support they do provide, while most vendors don't give a damn about linux, period.

You are wrong.

NVidia and ATI make money from hardware. Money that you already paid at the time when you are looking for a suitable driver.

What if RMS had said "Existing Unix tools are good enough and they work, why bother with a free compilers/tools"?
What if Linus had come to the conclustion that Minix is good enough, and why bother with a free alternative?
There would be no GNU and no Linux and we wouldn't be here having this discussion.

What if NVidia suddenly decided not to support Linux? What if they riddle their drivers with DRM and other nonsense?

Closed source drivers not good enough, at best a temporary solution.

As soon as there is any 3D gfx card with an open specification that allows for free (in all senses) drivers, I'd ditch my current ATI card in favor of that card even of it would not have the same feature set.

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