So What?

The people supplying these modules (and the people supplying a lot of open source ones, too)
are only really concerns with what will make them money (what they're not legally allowed to
do is simply something that has a high chance of future financial risk, so a special case).

So the question they ask is: Will binary modules provide us enough income to cover the cost of
developing them? That seems these days to mean: Will OEMs that care about Linux support use
our hardware if there's a binary driver for it but no open source driver?

Now, if hardware vendors think that OEMs will accept this letter as the basis for deciding
whether hardware is suitable for inclusion in Linux-friendly systems, then it will have a huge
effect: providing a binary driver won't get a vendor any new sales; it'll only make unhappy
customers a bit less unhappy, but no more likely to buy from them again, and it will primarily
benefit users who didn't make the purchasing decision anyway.

The letter avoids the disputable question of whether you're allowed to write binary-only
modules, in favor of the more clear and applicable question of whether there's any point to
writing binary-only modules, to which the answer really is: nVidia can probably get some
benefit out of it for the chipsets in the pipeline currently; otherwise, don't bother. (If it
were only a question of legality, vendors would all switch to providing binary-only drivers
for BSD, where it's obviously legal but just as obviously pointless; everybody who wants
drivers for BSD doesn't want binary-only drivers)