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Nvidia Publishing Supporting Documentation to Open Source Devs

Hardware GPU
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#1

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Open-GPU-Docs

Pretty cool. Something to note:

Work in progress, which I interpret to mean as time goes on, more documentation will be uploaded and more source code will be opened and pushed.

Pretty good initiative on their part. Some are speculating this is to help with mobile, but Nvidia isn’t 100% proprietary. They have a ton of open source stuff released (and have had it for a while). They might just be looking to improve their stock on the Linux side.

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#2

That’s only natural after they’ve been anything but supportive of open source driver efforts. Yet, it feels a little too small of a gesture at this point. At least imo as they still haven’t released anything on the current generation of GPU afaik.

Yeah Nvidia will go the proprietary route 90% of the time if they think they can monopolize something new. i.e. Gsync, their virtualized GPU stack, etc. So I guess it’s not 100% :stuck_out_tongue:

That said it’s a step in the right direction, but… we’ll see.

#3

Does this mean potentially better open source drivers in the future?

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#4

It’s good that they are starting to take the hint about opensource.
Still a long way to go.

#5

Anything is better than nothing in my opinion. Even if it was to be only 10% that’s still 10% more than what was available before. Hopefully that could be capitalized to 10% more performance for FOSS users/applications down the line.

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#6

They’ve made contributions to nouveau.

I expected this sentiment, but personally don’t think it’s very practical. If they have a long way to go, it’s not as far as before. Proprietary is not 100% evil 100% of the time.

Be it a small gesture or a monumental effort, it’s still moving in the direction to help developers and make their product more compatible across every platform.

Perhaps they’re removing some bugs, comments that contain sensitive internal information, or copyright information. Their GitHub is massive, with a vast array of technologies. None of their competitors are 100% free and open.

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#7

FTFY. :slight_smile:

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#8

Being Proprietary does not itself make anything “evil”, but when it’s Nvidia… :wink::laughing: Sorry, bad pun

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#10

No, it really isn’t.

#11

I’m sorry, let me get this straight. You think proprietary software is like slavery?

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#12

Comparing slavery to proprietary software? Sorry but that doesn’t make sense.

#13

Maybe back on track? I will say I expect exactly 0 to come of this, maybe even a move backward where they roll any fixes/improvements back into proprietary drivers and packages.

But I look forward to seeing if anything comes of this.

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#14

Really? Why is that? Do they have a history of shutting down open source efforts once they’ve received contributions?

Same, it was a pretty big deal imo.

#15

Proprietary software is putting you in a direct dependency relationship with the software provider and the software provider has every incentive to keep you there. But it is not slavery no, I never said it was either.

What I said was:

Proprietary software is not 100% evil 100% of the time.
Slavery is not 100% evil 100% of the time.

That does not make either one right.

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#16

Well that is the nature of the people I guess. Nvidia could 100% open source their driver, fix major problems in linux, bring gaming to the linux masses, cure cancer, save the children, and people would still hate on nvidia because reasons.

In the wise words of a lesser person

“My multinational melted sand company is my personal friend and I will defend it to the death.”

No what you said was

You drew a fallacious comparison.

You should be ashamed of thinking it. Its a closed minded attitude.

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#17

I’m hoping improvements to nouveau drivers that would reduce screen tearing. Or further improvements to Nvidia driver to reduce screen tearing.

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#18

Imagine being so soft that you would compare lack of documentation and API to one of the most heinous human acts.

Dude no.
Look any open sourcing is good news. AMD/ATI was ass at one point with open source and their drivers were a joke on Linux, worse than NVIDIA but they buckled down and it is pretty good. Give team green a chance too.

3 Likes
#19

I am.

Current status: AMD is around 10-15% worse in performance and have some slight problems like fans constantly on even in idle, overall however much less tinkering than nVidia.

Since I prefer less tinkering over performance I will go AMD until such a time nVidia is more convenient to use.

If nVidia decide to play ball with that preference, then I will reevaluate, but right now their open driver is years away at this point.

#20

Also, really glad about this.

MIT > GPL

Imagine a world where novideo is a dead meme.

4 Likes
#21

GPL 2 was alright. Wish we could roll back 3.