I have no prior examples to point to in regards to open source stuff from nVidia, I just treat the entire company with an aire of suspicion and distrust in regards to the wellbeing of their customers. In the past all I can think of (not necessarily the case) has always been for the company and frequently in that at the detriment of the customers.
So no specific reason to doubt their current efforts but a history stretching back a long way to doubt every last thing they do especially if it is out of character and seemingly ânice guyâ stuff. Their has to be a motive for the companies betterment above all else.
I get that but I see it from the other side, where users want a feature or something else and it is then developed and improved by the community who also find it useful.
I just canât for into my head that this is anything other than for nVidia and no one else. Or to put it another way what is in it for the people working on it? After all they are not being paid so it had better be useful.
I get your perspective, I was trying to suggest that every company that goes into OSS or releases OSS is doing it for their own benefit. Microsoft, Linux, AMD, RedHat, IBM, Google.
If Linux kernel devs didnât receive changes that made other products better, their software wouldnât be as far or as good as it is today. Same with AMD.
The way open source works is that they canât take it away once people have contributed. They can stop maintaining it, but it is immortalized in the Internet world.
No one is saying this is a bad thing. Weâre saying this is good, but many of us will need more before comitting.
Itâs like this; Company A pays their employees a minimum wage. Company B pays their employees ten times the minimum wage. Company A realises all talent is now at Company B and as a result, decide to raise their wages⌠By 100%.
Meanwhile the employees at company B wonder why they would ever want to work at company A if all they can offer is a fifth of what they currently earn.
Better is still not good. But it is a start, for sure.
Ok, correction, theyâve been substantially less supportive than the other two camps. Though I never said they had not contributed any. /shrug.
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of proprietary hardware (Hence my examples) All the camps are using binary blobs of one kind or another yeah? But AMD and Intel to some extent choose to use open hardware standards (at least with things where compatibility between devices is key). I canât think of a time when consumers have benefited from a standards war between companies. Well maybe in the near term there are price benefits from the competition, but it sucks for those that bet on the standard that loses.
Worse is proprietary/drm laden consumables that attempt to force the consumer to buy only buy from their deviceâs manufacturer. But that doesnât really apply to GPUs, but it does illustrate why proprietary hardware is a bit of a trigger for me.
Iâm not a fan of proprietary software either, and I will always choose open source unless there is large discrepancy in features/performance. Isnât that the case generally speaking between nouveau and Nvidiaâs driver? Certainly this topic is about shortening the distance between the two, but until all their GPUâs are documented to a level where nouveau has a good chance of closing that gap, Iâm going to look at Nvidiaâs moves with a bit of skepticism. It would really suck if they used this documentation to essentially push off support of older hardware to the community so they can more aggressively remove supported GPUs from the proprietary one for example.
To my knowledge all of their contributions are for the integrated tegra chips that nobody here cares about. As far as desktop cards go they are holding back the signed firmware files for years which makes the open source drivers useless. Nouveau isnât even asking for code contributions. Nvidia only has to release files they already have lying around.
Itâs a step in the right direction, but not even close to what is required.
Required for people to not think badly of nvidia. The documentation is certainly appreciated, but this still feels like a friendly pat while simultaneously getting punched in the face.
Iâm not a nouveau developer, but from what I can gather from phoronix thereâs two main issues right now:
Modern chips require signed firmware files to work. Nvidia keeps promising that theyâll release them âsoonâ to help out the project and then keeps delaying for long periods of time. Again, this requires virtually no manpower on their part. If they really cared about helping out all they needed to do is provide the files in a reasonable timeframe.
Nouveau cannot currently change the clock speed of the chips. Better insight into instructions, compiler improvements, pipeline optimizations are all kinda useless if your chip is sitting there, running at itâs base frequency.
The released documentation addresses neither of these issues. Once again nvidia is giving us something that sounds good but doesnât carry any significance in practice.
My understanding is people think very highly of them. A fringe user base is upset because source code theyâll likely never read hasnât been released in totality.
I donât think the out right rejection of their efforts is necessary, though. They can do something good while still work on the overarching goal.
Earlier you said Nouveau isnât asking for contributions. I guess there was a previous agreement that they are waiting to be met, in the form of documentation?
No, I never said that. The people that write and review source code for graphics cards, much less in an open source capacity, is a small group. The people in that group that get vehemently argumentative and combative when that industry isnât open source is a smaller base.
Okay, you lost me there. We need those files, there is no question about this.
Oh absolutely. Most users only see the finished product and there is no doubt in my mind that nvidia blows the competition out of the water. Heck Iâm using their card right now because of this.
We as people who understand technology should have a deeper look than just performance and power consumption however. Their business practices suck and a couple pages of documentation donât fix that. Not even close.
I agree. At no point have I said that the documentation is a bad thing. Iâm happy they released it, but remain cautious.
Maybe I wasnât clear enough about this. Iâm sure nouveau would be happy to receive code drops. My point is that nvidia has a very straightforward way to help the project, yet refuses to do so. Nvidia doesnât need to hire developers and start writing code to give the developers access to the firmware.
Yeah, and âjust releasing them is all they have to doâ is what I meant âmaybe, maybe notâ to. They might be purging or cleaning information. My company couldnât just release code to the public, we have some sensitive data in there. It would take some time.
Ah, I get what youâre saying. I think I read into your comment too much. Appreciate the clarification.
Thatâs a valid point, but I donât think this is the case.
We are talking about a blob here, not human readable source code
Before nvidia started requiring signed software it was possible to extract the firmware from the card after initializing it once with the official driver. So if nvidia is hiding anything theyâre not doing a good job at it.
Anyway, weâre entering the realm of speculation hereâŚ
I guess my point was somewhat unclear. Making broad generalizations when a discussion is mostly subjective is kind of a recipe for a heated debate rather than a friendly discussion.