LWN: Comments on "Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?"

+1

nix — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 16:23:23 +0000

The authors of the ATI and Intel drivers are not `newbie hackers' by any 
definition, and breaking basic functionality in development branches while 
restructuring things is entirely expected.

+1

gvy — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 08:43:07 +0000

Worse, newbie hackers tend to break basic functionality for fancy stuff no one sane really
needs to get things done!  Intel driver was clearly broken some half a year ago, judging on
numerous frustration reports in mailing lists I follow; Driver "ati" (at least radeon part)
broke for me with 6.7.x -- no it's not fun to get arbitrary 96dpi on 133dpi display at all.

So before moaning and shooting with dirt it's really worth looking without those special
glasses, who's actually doing better even in presence of specs for hardware which does require
some expertise to drive.  And that expertise seems to be slowly disappearing in xorg project
with older developers getting silent...

rhetoric in the movement

jabby — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 00:31:00 +0000

There are a few issues going on here that need to be disentangled from each other in order to
make sense of it all. One of them is particularly interesting to me (the "we" confusion)
because I was accused of the same thing not too long ago and it really stung. Thus, I am
motivated to engage in this exercise...

I think Mr. Corbet was quite clear at the end of the piece in saying that no one can force
anyone to stop developing free drivers and explicitly stating that it was an admonishment to
each individual developer to consider the consequences of their free software activities in a
particular way. So, while the offending paragraph, taken out of context, might be interpreted
by a reader as suggesting an effort to control the actions of others, that was apparently not
the intent of the piece. Invoking notions of oppressive dictatorships is just inflammatory
rhetoric.

That being said, I think Mr. Corbet was also using a rhetorical style similar to the one that
I was called out on once; that is, using the pronoun "we" in an imprecise way, assuming that
the reader would interpret it "correctly" each time. This is what I think lies at the root of
the controversy stirred up by this piece. Mr. Corbet is addressing an audience that is
generally affiliated with the Free Software movement to some degree, but which is quite
diverse within that spectrum. He is usually very successful at this tricky task by
maintaining an objective distance, crafting solid arguments and drawing fairly unprovocative
conclusions. In this case, the argument is a provocative one and the fact that the audience
is heterogeneous makes the word "we" ambiguous, especially when it is attached to assumptions
about motives and goals.

The Free Software movement sees software freedom as improving the human condition and works to
promote that freedom. But, the Free Software *movement* is not a coherent organization with
any official structure. There are no membership criteria, no elections, no rules. Thus, no
one can presume to speak for all of those who might consider themselves to be a part of that
movement. Each separate event might appeal to the minds of some in the movement, but probably
not to all and not uniformly. Take, for example, the anti-DRM work being undertaken by the
FSF. Is it just "free market" economics? If it's self-injurious to the perpetrators, why not
just let the market sort it out? Is it even relevant to the Free Software movement? These
are all controversial points, I think. Each person may take a different stand and yet all
might consider themselves to be part of the Free Software movement.

At the same time, the Free Software movement is an embattled and diverse minority, which is a
tricky thing to navigate and not to be handled lightly. Tactics and philosophies differ, and
people aren't clear on why that is. So, confusing "we, the community" with "we, those in this
movement who believe as I do" is easy to do.

An embattled minority is also in need of constant encouragement: to keep fighting, to not lose
hope, to remember its successes and learn from its failures. Mr. Corbet is very good at
encouraging this movement. In a diverse movement, however, encouragement can seem
presumptuous when the motives of the author and the reader don't align... which leads me to
my last point...

I believe the author (Mr. Corbet) here is conflating the goals of two distinct currents in the
Free Software movement: the "moralists" and the "pragmatists." The moralists' goal is a
world with 100% free software so that no one can be harmed by the evils of proprietary
software. The pragmatists' goal is wider acceptance and use of Free Software, to the point
that it makes life better/easier for some people.

In this piece there is an emphasis placed on pragmatism (leverage against for-profit entities,
perceived benefits, market competition, etc.) and at the same time there is an implied moral
judgment in favor of free software (proprietary -> bad; GPL -> good). This could leave some
readers with the impression that the author is making arguments about tactics for an
inherently amoral medium (markets) based on moralist principles. I think I've detected this
conflict many times on LWN, but it's hard to delineate. It is usually successful in
straddling the divide in the community, but it is also open to criticism from both sides.

That can also give some undeserved credibility to certain forms of weak criticism. The
criticism here, for example, is essentially a laissez faire or libertarian argument that no
one should tell anyone what to do and that free software will rise or fall on its merits and
that that is acceptable (i.e. there is no morality).

This argument, when boiled down to its essense, is hard to swallow. People in the Free
Software movement generally recognize that it is in a minority position and that the current
dominant players have rigged the system against it (software patents, litigious front
companies, exclusive OEM deals, rigged votes in standardization bodies, etc.). Having no
coherent plan or strategy is just foolish in the face of such entrenched interests. The
market doesn't operate on merit.

Moreover, attacking people who are debating and proposing strategies as if they were trying to
impose their will on others is disingenuous and counterproductive. Everyone has the right to
express their opinions about strategy; since no one can force them upon others, they could
never *be* attempts to do so. Therefore, they must be considered to be, at most,
exhortations, addressed to a diverse but generally interested audience. These ideas will be
received to varying degrees and some may adjust their thoughts and/or actions because of that.
That is the most that one can do in a loose confederation.

I also feel the need to point out the gains that have been won for the Free Software movement
through coordinated action. Linus and the other core contributors coordinate kernel
development (and there is even an annual conference for planning how to do it!), resulting in
an unprecedented pace of development. The FSFE launched a coordinated attack against software
patents in Europe and actually defeated software patent legislation in the EU! The EFF
coordinates and plans their legal strategies for fighting for digital freedom; result:
http://www.eff.org/victories. The DefectiveByDesign (DBD) team coordinates their actions to
expose the evils of DRM; one could argue that their success in spreading this awareness is at
least partially responsible for the recent abandonment of DRM in music. And each free
software project with more than one worker (developer, artist, marketer, etc.) is a
microexperiment in coordination; each finds its own balance, but coordinate they must.
Result: there are thousands of free software packages to choose from that allow for hundreds
of GNU/Linux distributions to meet the needs of millions of users worldwide.

The upshot: let the debate continue, because an embattled minority must always been
questioning its strategy, but if all you're essentially saying is "shut up," then you're not
helping.

Gnash and YouTube

zenaan — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 01:19:13 +0000

So did you submit the URL to the Gnash guys, so they could debug the problem?

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

nix — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 22:20:53 +0000

I've only encountered people trying to tell volunteers what to do a few 
times in more than a decade of observing numerous development lists. In 
each case the result is... well, generally the poor sods get laughed at, 
whch is even worse than flaming :)

It seems to me that you're complaining about a vanishingly rare problem 
which is easily dealt with (oh, so you're *not* paying us, but presume to 
instruct us? We'll ignore you. That was easy.)

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

ketilmalde — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:01:32 +0000

> i.e., they're not like oppressive dictatorships?

Yes. They share the mentality, but thankfully not the means.

>  Your whole post was a tissue of logical fallacies, but I'm just going to mention this one
because it's rather amusing:

Since it apparently wasn't clear enough what I meant, allow me to restate: 

Some people think that because they (are part of a "community"|contribute to the Linux
kernel|believe in the right deity|are devout members of the right party), this equips them
with the superior morals to decide what others should and should not do - as well as claim
ownership of others' resources (confer Corbets "we", relating to the time and effort of eight
people developing Nouveau drivers, or the notion that the nVidia binary driver is somehow a
derived work of the Linux kernel).

I find the notion offensive, and counter to the spirit of free software as I understand it.

Now if you have a problem with that, I'm sure you can do better than offer patronizing and
prejudicial remarks.  Can't you?

-k

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

alext — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:34:17 +0000

Not really, he is saying that Free Software developers can't develop as good drivers with no
documentation of the hardware as people who have are informed about every essential nugget of
configuring and operating the boards to the max. If the NVidia drivers weren't the best you
really would hope they would fire the engineers!

I've thought from the start nouveau was a mistake and more so every time AMD or Intel release
spec's for hardware. My next machine won't have NVidia in it unless they are free by then and
I think this whole affair is just making people realise that others deserve their support
where they didn't know different before. I didn't. So NVidia need to react or start to lose
share.

There are practical reasons, if I can have a machine that requires no special treatment (even
with the helpful Ubuntu restricted drivers tool for example) to run at its best I will choose
it over one with just the hiccup of an extra task. That's the practical reality.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

nix — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 21:06:32 +0000

Your whole post was a tissue of logical fallacies, but I'm just going to mention this one because it's rather amusing:

I used to laugh about the old-times comparison of free software to communism, but the emphatic instence from vocal elements that I should only use my computer in specific ways to fulfil their moral views, that is right there with oppressive dictatorships - and thank god these people don't have any actual way of enforcing this.

i.e., they're not like oppressive dictatorships? I'd say it was an essential characteristic of oppressive dictatorships that they can dictate and oppress.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

m94mni — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:43:20 +0000

There you have it, I agree completely that a likely scenario is that the nouveau driver gets
popular, and NVIDIA is compelled into supporting it or open sourcing their own.

As have been stated my many posters, people buy NVIDIA to get superior hardware. When the
built-in driver (nouvaeu in the future) starts to be *almost* all what people need, I believe
many customers (individuals and companies/organizations) *will* start complaining about it.

To save face, NVIDIA might need to make sure the driver works better.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

ketilmalde — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 10:43:18 +0000

> I think this article is a surprisingly extreme critique of what a bunch of
> people decide to do with their own time.

Amen.  And with their own computers, I might add.

Nvidia has been our -- well mine, at least -- sole provider of working 3D (and other features)
on Linux.  Sure, I'd prefer an open source driver, but I actually, you know, *use* my
computer, I don't keep it as a tribute open source religion.

I used to laugh about the old-times comparison of free software to communism, but the emphatic
instence from vocal elements that I should only use my computer in specific ways to fulfil
their moral views, that is right there with oppressive dictatorships - and thank god these
people don't have any actual way of enforcing this.  (Although attempts are being made at
sabotaging my user experience by legal threats against distributors)

What ever happened to the idea that open source was about the freedom of the user?  That I
shouldn't be bound by the whims of my software supplier to decide how to use my own computer?

You don't like nVidia, fine: go buy Intel or whatever floats your boat.  Help ATI, the
prodigal son of open source, develop drivers.  Blog about configuration.  Or, flame me for
being morally corrupt and not part of the community (although I do develop some free software,
being part of the community seems to be more about moral outrage about the free, individual
choices others make.  Who's our glorious leader anyway, Linus Torvalds or L. Ron Hubbard?)

Corbet says:

> NVIDIA, instead, is giving us nothing - and, in return, we are giving it
> an eight-person development team dedicated to the production of free
> drivers for its hardware.

Nvidia has done nothing for the free software community, well, except making free software a
viable option for more people.  Without Nvidia, I'd still need to have a Windows partition.

And I don't know who the "we" are here - I certainly aren't paying for anybody to work on it.
It seems very strange to be doing all this "giving", and at the same time be so annoyed about
it.  I guess it's those poor Noveau folks, they just aren't capable of comprehending the
consequences of their own choice?  I bet they feel really good about Jon helping them see the
error of their ways.  Or maybe they, like me, aren't part of the "community"?

I nominate that paragraph as the most offensive thing on LWN so far.

Here's what I think:

  1) In contrast to the vocal moralist faction, lots of Linux users will continue to buy
nVidia as long as it remains the only working solution.

  2) If and when Noveau is working well enough, people will start to switch, at the point
where the driver-features/emotional-attachment-to-free-software ratio is right.

  3) If and when ATI delivers a working open source driver, most Linux users who need 3D will
buy ATI - unless nVidia also provides an open source driver.  At least, this is what I will
do.

What will *not* happen, is that people will buy non-working ATI cards just to satisfy other
people's sense of morality.  And if Linux continues being the vehicle for moral enforcement,
and stops being the right tool for the job, I predict a glorious future for FreeBSD.

-k

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

forthy — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 09:32:13 +0000

Well, one can speculate that, but how can this come true? NVidia then might not work on a kernel.org kernel, but a simple patch would remove this limitation. The legal question about the NVidia kernel module is about the same as the ndiswrapper discussion: Both are designed to load a Windows driver module (or something very similar to such a module) into the Linux kernel. Both wrappers are available under the GPL, and therefore compatible with the kernel license. The modules they load are not designed for the Linux kernel, and therefore not a derived work.

One can argue that creating such an interface is a Bad Thing(tm), like a plug-in interface to GCC has been considered as such, but that's it (even though I agree to the argument). And the kernel is "tainted" when a Windows driver runs in its space; but for a license that excludes any warranty whatsoever, the consequence of "tainted" is not that important.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

wilck — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:23:54 +0000

> Haven't you read the comments from the Dell Linux guy?  Dell now *actively* > prefers
hardware
> with open specs, *even for systems they pre-install Windows on*!!!

Please have a look at Dell's offerings. Except for the low-end, all laptops have NVidia
boards. Even the "Open Source PC" comes with an NVidia board.

Who Cares? (besides gamers)

tjc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:20:38 +0000

> This crowd is not large, though.

That was my thought, that this is 99% gamers, and 1% everything else.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

vmole — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:52:52 +0000

Of course I'm aware of that. But I'm also aware those users, who have money to spend, did not use their buying power to influence one of the 3D companies to provide free drivers. They have taken advantage of the hard work of others to get off the expensive SGI workstations.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

amikins — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:02:39 +0000

... Wait, what? You -ARE- aware there's REAL WORK that requires 3d graphics acceleration to be
anything resembling efficient?

There's modelling objects or products, either prior to production, or as the actual production
in the case of media. Architects, engineers, animators..

All these people can reasonably require extremely high end 3d graphics to get their work done.

Then there's simulations. Astronomers, physicists.. They, too, can need 3d modelling in order
to get their work done; it isn't all pure number crunching in the background. You have to
-show- what's happening, too.

Oh, and then there's the game developers, too...

OT: S3 / VIA adapter drivers?

tjc — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:02:33 +0000

http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=3DStatus

Don't buy Nvidia!

Felix_the_Mac — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:23:50 +0000


For what it's worth ... I am currently specc'ing up some Lenovo ThinkPad laptops for my
company and I am specifically going to order a lower spec or get a custom build with Intel
graphics rather than purchase the NVidia graphics option.

You're missing the point

pr1268 — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 02:17:21 +0000

Saving $600 is worth a few regrets.

Parasitism

jdivine — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 01:37:17 +0000

Defining the boundary between "derivative work" and "mere aggregation" is not a matter for the
kernel people to decide. It's a matter of copyright law. I have no idea how a court would
actually rule on this issue, but I thought I'd point out that it's not really for the kernel
people to decide. I suspect, however, that a court might think any arbitrary technical
"boundary" -- whether that be system calls, dynamic linking, whatever -- is irrelevant. US
Copyright law says that derivative status depends on whether the work in question is "based
upon" preexisting work.

Imagine the following scenario: A video card manufacturer writes a Windows driver for its
product. Later, they decide that they'll port the existing Windows driver to run on Linux.
(Whether that is actually feasible is not relevant to this thought experiment.) So using the
"clean room" approach, one engineer documents the Linux system calls that the driver needs to
hook into, and posts that information publicly. A second engineer takes that documentation
and uses it to port the driver. Is this driver now "based upon" the Linux kernel? The bulk
of the software existed before the kernel entered the picture, and the guy who developed it
never even looked at the kernel code. Is the API documentation itself a "derived work?"

That being said, I don't approve of (and try to avoid) proprietary kernel modules and
proprietary software in general. I just doubt that there can be a "technical test" to
determine what is and is not a derived work as a matter of copyright.

Gnash and YouTube

zlynx — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:27:37 +0000

For values of "works" that include non-working, randomly positioned play/stop buttons, 100%
CPU usage, bad network buffering.

I used to use Gnash but if it's installed when I load my 80+ entry Comics tab, Gnash tries to
play *every* flash animation loaded even if it isn't visible on the page or on the tab.  At
100% CPU *per animation* load climbs to 20+ before it falls over from memory exhaustion.

You're missing the point

jayavarman — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 22:20:00 +0000

My experience has been quite different. On my laptop the nvidia driver works pretty much well
and stably. I just close the lid, the laptop sleeps and then comes back again. I can get
several days of uptime. The power management seems to also work quite well, although the
chip/driver is a bit too laggy to increase the frequency when needed.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

ikm — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:37:10 +0000

Interesting read, thanks.

Who Cares? (besides gamers)

ikm — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:21:12 +0000

> I'm wondering, is there anyone who *doesn't* play 3D games who even cares about this?

Content producers (as opposed to content consumers)  3d modeling, games/3d-enabled soft
development, CAD applications (though I'm not sure there are Linux apps for the latter). 3D is
used not only to draw some fantasy settings, but to visualize real-world structures
(chemistry, medical, physical appliances etc). Another use for 3d hardware with Linux is to
build public terminals/etc with 3D eye candy. Stuff like that. This crowd is not large,
though.

Who Cares? (besides gamers)

mrshiny — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:10:21 +0000

I bet a lot of the nVidia linux users are windows dual-booters.  I, for one, dual-boot Windows
to play games.  But I still use the proprietary nVidia driver because it beats the pants off
the nv driver.  In fact my current notebook doesn't even work with the nv driver, but even on
my last two PCs the nv driver was only barely adequate.  

Some users have certain requirements from their hardware: for me, acceptable 3D for games is
one requirement, and also, I stopped buying ATI after I had numerous bad experiences with
their (proprietary windows and free linux) drivers.  When I buy a nVidia card I know that my
3D will work, my dual-head will work, and my TV-out will work.  And because I do use Windows
for gaming I can't settle for an Intel card even though I would like an open driver.

Given that I am already going to buy a nVidia card for use in Windows, is it still a
contradiction that I want a free driver in Linux?  I'd say no.  My only other choice would be
to buy a game console, but that's even less free/open than a computer.

As for "going whole-hog" and using Windows exclusively... let's not exaggerate.  Windows is
for certain tasks only, mainly games.  Just because I play games doesn't mean I shouldn't be
using Linux the rest of the time.

You're missing the point

liljencrantz — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:42:11 +0000

Your points are mostly valid, but Intel doesn't sell any desktop cards, and back when I bought
my hardware ATI where nowhere near open either, so I really had no option there. 

I really wanted to buy a laptop with an Intel GPU, but the exakt same laptop that I bought but
with Intel graphics cost a full $600 more than the one I bought. They where selling the laptop
I bought at almost half price because they had introduced the exact same model but with Vista
certification. Thanks, Micorsoft!!! While I strongly wanted to support Intel, $600 was simply
too much, and I caved in. I have some regrets.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

jmayer — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:12:03 +0000

<SPECULATION>
Some things make me think that eventually binary only drivers will be 
banned completely from being loaded into the kernel. If that day comes, 
having the most stable and most performant driver will not help the least
and with OSS drivers being available for Intel and AMD cards it might be 
that kernel developers will just decide that there is sufficient choice to  
go forward with the ban, whether it hits Nvidia users or not.
</SPECULATION>

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

AJWM — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:05:04 +0000

Cool. I think I last looked at it at 0.7.1.  I'll give the latest a try.

Thanks.

You're missing the point

drag — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 06:04:52 +0000

> All in all, the driver is crappy, and because it is closed source, I have no other option
than to sit around and hope nVidia will accidentally fix this in a later release, which seems
somewhat unlikely.


Well, with hindsight, what you should of done was never purchase the hardware in the first
place. With these sort of things your not only paying for the hardware, but your paying for
the software.

That is without the drivers the hardware is useless (or nearly useless). Nvidia, by keeping
stuff closed, is using their software as part of the product you are purchasing. One is
nothing without the other.

That is because you bought Nvidia's hardware you are paying for them to continue to develop
closed source drivers. (In comparison how much have you paid to develop open source drivers?)


So the other course of action, right now, is sell your Nvidia stuff and buy something with
Intel on it. So if you have problems with their driver support yourself or somebody can
actually do something about it.

If you cannot do that because of the money. Oh well. Better luck next time.

If you cannot work with Intel hardware because of performance issues, then you'll never be
able to work with the open source nvidia drivers either. There will never be the developer
support or community support nessicary to get those drivers up to the same level of Nvidia's
own drivers in a timely fasion. So your screwed coming and going.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

Ford_Prefect — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 04:55:45 +0000

I think this article is a surprisingly extreme critique of what a bunch of people decide to do
with their own time.

NVidia really isn't getting free drivers out of this. Unless they actually support this
project, they're going to have to keep providing their own drivers. The Nouveau devs benefit
because they're having fun, and the community benefits from open source drivers, but NVidia
gets nothing unless they officially start supporting the Nouveau project. People who choose to
not buy NVidia hardware for lack of openness will still not buy their hardware, and people who
don't care about openness will continue to not care.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

landley — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:22:01 +0000

Keep in mind that both Intel and AMD are bundling 3D accelerators onto new 
processors, and this has been common knowledge for something like a year 
now:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/29/1252203
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070211-8810.html

Here's actual product names (Intel's "Nehalem" and AMD's "Fusion") and 
shipping schedules.  It all comes out about a year from now:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/26/intel_cpu_integra...

Ars Technica has a good summary of Intel's follow-up, explicitly comparing 
Intel's plans to IBM/Sony's Cell processor:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070416-intel-offic...
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070604-clearing-up...

The basic driving force is that transistor budgets keep going up.  Even 
the venerable Pentium M had 2 megabytes of L2 cache, and Core 2 duo and 
Core 2 Quatro put 2 or 4 entire processors on the die in an attempt to 
soak up the transistor budget and translate that into performance gains 
and profit margins.  But most desktops can't soak up more than a couple of 
processors before it's just not noticeable.  (Servers may be able to, and 
developer workstations can, but most home computers doing email, web 
browsing, watching the occasional youtube video...  The third and fourth 
cores just sit idle, let alone cores 5-8 on an 8 way system.)

Bundling a GPU on the die is something all end user desktops want these 
days, and it just _sucks_up_ transistors.  Now instead of 4 processors 
sharing a pool of L2 cache, you can have 2 processors and a GPU, and your 
average desktop can keep them all running at full speed.  It also means 
you can increase the L2 cache size again (because it's now used as texture 
memory too, so you can go to 16 megs, 32, 64...), and it means that the 
highest clocked hardware in the system is locally processing graphics with 
the fastest possible interconnects with the CPU.  (There isn't even a 
_bus_ between the CPU and GPU anymore.)

Of course if Intel's doing this, AMD is too.  (Why do you think they 
bought ATI?)

Where does that leave Nvidia?  Well, nvidia is trying to stay relevant by 
purchasing a physics engine company and hoping all the game consoles start 
using that:
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=222
http://technologyexpert.blogspot.com/2008/02/geforce-8-gp...

That's really what Nvidia cares about: game consoles.  If they have to 
make a choice between game consoles and PC GPUs, it's pretty clear where 
their money comes from.

They're also trying hard to grab as much volume as they can before Intel 
and AMD bundle GPUs on-die with the CPU, perhaps to get game developers 
hooked on their physics engine before the market for standalone 3D chips 
goes the way of the northbridge:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/10/29/gpu_market_q3_07/

To which Intel replied:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/09/17/intel_to_buy_havok/

*shrug*  It's interesting to watch.  The market is driving Intel and 
Nvidia into direct collision (especially as people try to use GPUs as 
general purpose compting devices), and Intel is pretty darn good at what 
it does...

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

BeS — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:37:22 +0000

>When Gnash works as a Firefox plugin for YouTube videos, I'll switch.

Good news for you: Gnash works as a Firefox plugin for YouTube since version 0.8

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

th0ma7 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:27:35 +0000

I am actually planning to buy an upgraded video card since the last 6 months...

Although their drivers are open source and well supported Intel has nothing interesting at the
moment.  And I'm so damm tired of fighting with closed source drivers (either ATI or NVIDIA
particularly with their new legacy ones) that I'm currently waiting for either a working
Nouveau driver and update to a GeForce FX abc or a working Radeon driver and buy an AMD/ATI
xyz.

I'll probably end-up waiting until next Christmas before making a final choice since I presume
one of the two projects (or even both) will have sufficient supported hardware in both 2D &
3D.

I actually dream that, running Linux, I may end-up having that choice to make between the
two... unless nVidia buys-up AMD :)

Old hardware

ncm — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:31:29 +0000

I run the nv driver on my laptop and on my desktop.  I use an nvidia card in my laptop because
the Intel chip would steal bus cycles.  I put a spare nvidia card in my desktop machine last
month because the X server driving the Intel chip had begun crashing; thus far it hasn't
crashed with the nv driver.

I don't see any way for the above to be forced into the notion that stopping development on
Noveau would punish Nvidia or help ATI or Intel.  That seems like many interesting and
plausible hypotheses that turn out to fail to connect with anything in the real world.

Missing perspective

filipjoelsson — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:05:49 +0000

There's an open driver for Intel, and the AMD/ATI people are slowly delivering specs - but
where exactly does the contributed drivers/specs plug in?

Until recently a little of it went into the kernel, and then a duplication of effort in X,
with some 2D stuff completely divorced from the 3D stuff that went into an opengl
implementation. And using both frame buffer driver and X.org driver for the same card was
discouraged (sometimes or always? dunno).

Now stuff are evolving into a coherent infrastructure, with Gallium 3D picking up the 3D
interface - and kernel duplication slowly migrating out of X.org (with the vision of not
having to run X as root some time in the future, yay :). If this infrastructure is built
primarily around one hardware implementation, it may turn out not to be as useful as we are
currently hoping. So the more, the merrier. 

I think Nouveau development isn't detracting from the other free implementations, since it
adds in the common parts of free 3D graphics and since it raises the general level of
expertise (sp?). Do we know for a fact that these developers would have been working on
Intel/ATI drivers, if there had been no Nouveau project? (Well, I mean apart from David
Airlie... ;)

Competition among graphics chips

rfunk — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:59:09 +0000

Your quote from nVidia talks about Intel and AMD, then you talk about IBM 
and AMD.  Intel and IBM are completely different companies.

Who Cares? (besides gamers)

oak — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 21:16:26 +0000

> I'm wondering, is there anyone who *doesn't* play 3D games who even 
cares about this?

Hm. I care about things like: stability, low noise / power consumption / 
heat (especially in summer, integrated gfx chips are great here), good 
video quality & connections, full support for latest X extensions (Xv, 
Xrandr, ...) etc.  Some 3D support is nice, but my 3D gaming is mostly 
retro, so about any 3D card suffices.

> I guess if I were a gamer I would just dual boot Windows. If you're 
going to use proprietary software for something as critical as a graphics 
driver, why not go whole-hog and use a proprietary OS as well?

Or buy a games console...

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

ikm — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:41:58 +0000

Of course not. They are just unfriendly people who despise linux crowd because they think they
are too geeky.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

AJWM — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:35:35 +0000

> the number of Linux users who care so much about free software that they will not use the
> NVidia driver must be quite microscopic. (I suppose those are the same users that won't use
> Adobe's flash player, or Adobe Reader -- which is still the only real option for filling
> forms.  Personally I don't know any such people, though I'm sure they exist.)  

Well, you may not personally know me, but I avoid NVidia hardware so that I don't have to care
about their proprietary driver.  (An ATI 9250, with a free driver based on specs they released
before they went closed, gives me a perfectly adequate 30 fps in FlightGear FlightSim.)

I don't use Adobe Reader either, there are fine free PDF readers out there, and I have no need
for filling out PDF forms.

I'll admit to using Adobe's flash player -- but note a key difference between using Adobe's
no-charge downloadable software vs NVidia's you-pay-for-it-by-buying-the-card software.  When
Gnash works as a Firefox plugin for YouTube videos, I'll switch.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

ikm — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:34:52 +0000

3d is not only for self-indulging, as you're suggesting. And I'm certainly not a fanatic. I
just happen to have work to do. You have suggested nothing in how to accomplish that. Suit
yourself.

Reverse engineering: more than NVIDIA deserves?

vmole — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:40:50 +0000

You did suggest that I change my priniciples. You said I shouldn't say bad things about NVidia because they won't provide the information needed to support their hardware properly. (And actually, I don't say bad things about them; I simply don't buy *any* of their products, and, if asked, recommend that others avoid them as well.)

And sorry, this is harsh, but if you don't care enough about free software to avoid products that only have proprietary drivers, then you're not part of my community. Yes, that means you can't play Duke Nukem Forever. Such is life.

Now, don't get me wrong. If people want to spend their time working on Nouveau, I won't recommend that they be stopped, somehow. But I think it's perfectly reasonable to ask why they are supporting the one common 3D HW companies that is not making any effort at all to support the free software community. And no, I don't count closed source drivers that only work with certain kernels and certain architectures as "support".