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nVidias argument for not opening up the Linux driver is that it shares a lot of code with the Windows driver. I'm not saying that this argument makes sense, bu
by elmindreda 14y ago
nVidias argument for not opening up the Linux driver is that it shares a lot of code with the Windows driver. I'm not saying that this argument makes sense, but it's the one they use.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoI don't understand why that prevents them from releasing the source? There's no reason the Windows driver need be closed-source.
- robryan 14y agoThat depends, how much of their competitive advantage over AMD is in software and how much of it is hardware?
- yuhong 14y agoOr at least documenting the hardware.
- Orva 14y agoI might be waving hands here, but I got impression that actual components that do raw processing in GPU are not that complex. Complex part (and which produces the performance) is the pipeline feeding data into those units. GPUs are also programmable chips so even publishing driver that shows how graphic stack on GPU side is set up could potentially reveal whole architecture of that chip.
- archangel_one 14y agoI thought their argument was that some non-trivial amount of code in their driver is licensed somehow and they're thus not free to open source it. It sharing code with the Windows driver is the explanation for how that code got into the Linux driver to begin with.