Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves? [LWN.net]

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 18, 2008 23:33 UTC (Mon) by einstein (subscriber, #2052)
In reply to: Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves? by robertknight
Parent article: Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

> > About the only thing wrong with the NVidia drivers is the license
> > and lack of source code--in every other respect, they are a model
> > for how out-of-tree drivers should work on Linux.

> That is like giving a restaurant a great review and commenting that the only bad things were
the food, the ambiance and the price.

Not really - the food and ambience would be akin to the performance and the quality of the
display, which are both great. The price would be akin to, well, the price - also very
competitive. 

Perhaps a better analogy for the less than ideal licence, and the closed source blob would be
e.g. the inconvenient location of the restauraunt, and the too-short hours of operation. These
are real issues, but let's give credit where credit is due - 

Ristorante Nvidia features excellent food, charming ambiance and competitive pricing, but with
the downsides of an inconvenient location with insufficient parking and restrictive hours of
operation (4 to 7 pm, Tuesday-Thursday-Sunday)

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Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 19, 2008 1:07 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

If you want accuracy...

How about in order to eat at the Nvidia resturant they have to pass government laws requiring
you to be blindfolded, drugged, drove around the countryside until your completely
disoriented.

Then when you got to the resturant you are force-fed a certain amount of food of a certain
type.. becuase that is what will make the resturant seem most impressive.

Then to give your review you are forced to sign a EULA were you can't realy tell anybody about
what sort of food is at the place, or what you ate, or what you didn't and did like... but you
can happily talk about future products that they decide to allow you to and you can make
graphs comparing the food you ate to other food you've eaten and how fast the stuff passes
through your digestive track.

This is all to protect that resturant from other competition.. they don't want anybody leaking
anything about their recipes.. even though that has very little to do with the actual act of
eating and enjoying the food.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Posted Feb 19, 2008 2:41 UTC (Tue) by elanthis (subscriber, #6227) [Link]

How about you all stop stretching an analogy well beyond its original context?  :)

Read the EULA, please

Posted Feb 19, 2008 8:42 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Then come back and say it again. EULA (which you are supposedly agreed with but looks like in reality to not even read) forbids a lot of stuff and there were a lot cheating embedded in nVidia drivers (in extreme cases drivers just ignore shader code totally and are using totally different hand-crafted shaders which don't even look like original).

Sorry but this analogy is closer to the reality then what you are implying...