nvidia

Alan Cox alan at lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk
Mon Oct 29 13:41:00 UTC 2007


>     Now the Linux world is mad because Nvidia will not share the source 
> code. Has anyone asked for the source code?  There is  likely a rule at 

Actually people have repeatedly asked for chip documentation. The code
(as with ATI) is almost certainly going to contain third party components
they can't publish in source form - probably nowdays owned by Microsoft
rather than SGI.

As it is Nouveau is having to reverse engineer all the hardware details
to support the chips with free software. Thats a hard and tedious
process.

For the ATI driver we now have documentation, not ATI source code, and
that will lead to 3D drivers. Intel write their own drivers, VIA
sometimes throw stuff over the wall and run away which is how we got VIA
3D for some of their chipsets. 

> Nvidia that no software written by them goes out with source code. This 
> is the Microsoft idea.

About 10 seconds of investigation before typing would have shown this
untrue. Reading previous emails likewise where I pointed out that Nvidia
wrote and supplied the open source 2D Nvidia driver we ship as well...

Alan




More information about the fedora-list mailing list