Write to NVIDIA [LWN.net]

Write to NVIDIA

Posted Oct 17, 2006 4:22 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40)
In reply to: Write to NVIDIA by einstein
Parent article: Local root exploit in NVidia driver

> I would hate to see an end to nvidia's drivers, as they are currently the
> best video drivers available for linux at any price.

I hate to see all that good knowledge locked up inside a proprietary driver, and want an end to their proprietary nature.

> I'd love it if there was any OSS driver that could match the nvidia
> performance, but it's just not the case at present.

I'd love it if any proprietary driver was independently auditable and openly documented like *all* free software drivers. But that's just not the case.

> Let's at least admit that these nvidia people do know a thing or two
> about graphics programming.

I freely admit that nvidia people know a thing or two about graphics programming. I don't see any necessary connection with "knowing a thing or two about graphics programming" and "unable to release information needed for free software dirvers".

> And let's not kid ourselves, we've seen vulnerability reports every week
> for various open source programs, libraries and drivers.

That's a good thing, because those vulnerabilities are revealed very soon after they're discovered. Security vulnerabilities in non-free software are treated as a PR problem, and are covered up for as long as the holder can get away with it.

> the fact that it's already fixed

How can we know it's fixed at all? The only people who can say anything about that have a direct interest in not letting anyone know of any problems.

A free-software driver can be independently verified when it gets fixed, by people who have a direct interest in finding remaining problems. Not so for non-free drivers.

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Write to NVIDIA

Posted Oct 17, 2006 5:12 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

"I'd love it if any proprietary driver was independently auditable and openly documented like *all* free software drivers. But that's just not the case."

By "just not the case" I assume you must be refering to all free software drivers being openly documented and independently auditable. A great many drivers, graphics/X drivers and otherwise, are either filled with black voodoo that nobody but the author understands (and who is under NDA) or functions as little more than a loading mechanism to push a binary blob of firmware to the hardware.

Write to NVIDIA

Posted Oct 17, 2006 5:59 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> A great many drivers, graphics/X drivers and otherwise, are either filled
> with black voodoo that nobody but the author understands (and who is under
> NDA) or functions as little more than a loading mechanism to push a binary
> blob of firmware to the hardware.

Then those drivers are also non-free.

Yes, many such drivers are mistakenly distributed under the GPL or other free software licenses. While a free software license is necessary to make the software free, it's not sufficient. Software for which the source code is not freely distributable is non-free.

What drivers are truely Libre?

Posted Oct 17, 2006 16:15 UTC (Tue) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I wonder what drivers are truely free in the sense that is wanted by people. My experience that a lot of the voodoo with hardware starts with the manufacturer who found what values worked for them and have no idea what happens if you change bit 37 to 1 beyond it blew up Jo in testings monitor.