nvidia

[Scott van Looy]

Today Anders Karlsson did spake thusly:

> Thus, Les Mikesell at Mon Oct 29 03:11:29 2007 inscribed:
>> Frank Cox wrote:
>>
>>>> Except that the people providing the binary do have a reason to care if
>>>> it works.
>>> Until they decide that it's time to sell you another card and discontinue
>>> their binary blob for the model that you already have.
>>
>> In a reasonable OS, a binary blob that worked today would work again
>> tomorrow.
>
> Les,
>
> If you have such a beef about this particularly part about the
> argument, I suggest you take it onto the Linux Kernel mailing list. I
> would suggest you search the archives for it first though, as it has
> been debated extensively already and all the arguments you can come up
> with most likely have been replied to. It'll save traffic on this list.
>
> Just an observation...

The point Les appears to be missing is that the binary blob doesn't stay 
the same because the cards it supports don't stay the same. And as NVidia 
upgrade their hardware, they'll slowly stop supporting the older hardware.

A few years ago a nice man called Konst made something called centericq. 
It supported lots of nice IM protocols and was pretty much perfect. He 
released the source code under a GPL license and then decided after a 
while to stop maintaining it.

Because of the GPL, some other people decided to pick it up, rename it 
centerim and change it, so when the evil microsoft changed their IM 
protocols again it would still work.

This is what we call "free" software. IF NVidia stop supporting anything 
below a series 5 GPU, no-one can step in and offer support as there's no 
source code and no license allowing them to do this.

So. Whilst the original binary blob will be fine and dandy for a while, 
there may be security issues discovered around it, there may be an 
overhaul of how graphics should work that mean you could get twice the 
power out of the card. There might be all kinds of things that change, not 
least of all the kernel interface to take into account some of these 
things.

Progress isn't a bad thing. Ranting at Fedora people because someone 
else's hardware isn't easy to make work on their OS is a bit silly though.

Would you moan at redhat if you couldn't get Oracle to work on it, yet 
Oracle claimed linux compatibility?

-- 
Scott van Looy - email:me at ethosuk.org.uk | web:www.ethosuk.org.uk
site:www.freakcity.net - the in place for outcasts since 2003
PGP Fingerprint: 7180 5543 C6C4 747B 7E74  802C 7CF9 E526 44D9 D4A7
       -------------------------------------------
       |/// /// /// /// WIDE LOAD /// /// /// ///|
       -------------------------------------------

"It's in process":
 	So wrapped up in red tape that the situation is almost hopeless.