It is said that certain hackers stole NVidia source code and production documentation (ca. 1TB of data totally) and now they are blackmailing the company demanding to make the drivers open source
https://videocardz.com/newz/hackers-now-demand-nvidia-should-make-their-drivers-open-source-or-they-leak-more-data
Certain pieces of data are already leaked.
Personally, I'm stockpiling popcorn and anticipating the show to go on.
It strikes me as childish.
As much as I'd love nvidia to provide open source drivers I would expect threats and blackmail makes that less likely than more likely.
That's if you can get less likely than zero chance.
I imagine nvidia position will be along the lines of
(http://odroidxu.leeharris.me.uk/a/torvaldsnvidia-640x424.jpg)
Well, if NVidia doesn't satisfy the demands of the hackers, they'll publish the source code themselves (if they have balls, ofc). The drivers would become 'open source' either way, willingly or reluctantly.
E.g. Twitch became 'open source' a while ago the same way.
Anyway, any leaked data would help in developing the nouveau driver.
There were some comments on that page implying future Nvidia drivers are going to be open source anyway.
Unrelated but also interesting computer related news is the $100bn Intel plant planned for Ohio. (Not discussed in this link, a wider goal was also proposed to manufacture everything the USA consumes within the USA.)
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/president-biden-praises-intel-in-state-of-the-union-address-calls-on-congress-to-give-him-chip-bill-to-sign/ (https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/president-biden-praises-intel-in-state-of-the-union-address-calls-on-congress-to-give-him-chip-bill-to-sign/)
It really wouldn't. More of a hindrance.
Yeah. Leaked material is still copyrighted and using them as reference for nouveau would be illegal. The Windows 2000 leak in the mid '00s and the more recent XP leak were useless for Wine and ReactOS for that reason.
I don't imply direct usage of leaked code, of course. Instead, this code would provide us with knowledge on how NVidia hardware interfaces actually work etc. In the end of the day, reverse engineering is used in developing of nouveau; with source code available, the 'reverse' part of the workflow won't be as necessary as before.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes
The source code for GNU was deliberately made different than Unix, in order to prevent claims such as the one made by SCO. It is advised to make programs, for example, use dynamic heap allocation where the Unix program uses fixed stack blocks.
Having the source code publicly available would make it more difficult to claim independence of code from Nvidia's.
I think, if you took these codes and used that codes just for yourself, none would know. But for sharing, big deal.
ReactOS is great example, lets take a look at Contributing sections from README
https://github.com/reactos/reactos
you should have saved this for apirl fools day with that topic title. what a missed opportunity!
National Security risk to do otherwise and it lets us off the hook should china decide to impose itself on their neighbors. Without being dependent on china or their neighbors for our high end chips our government might be less inclined to assert itself in said conflict. as it stands now, we in the usa need to protect our overseas chip manufacturers..
From the end users perspective, the more new improved chips being made the better, where ever they are built! A lot of Intel chips and other types and brands of semiconductor are already made in the USA. No further news on the source code leak it seems so far, searching online. There are decompilers freely available which can unravel binaries although the output is much more difficult to understand than the original code, and graphics drivers are quite complex to start with. There's quite a lot of info already released by Nvidia if you look at the Nouveau tech docs. Happy nobody suspended you here, to the contrary, I had somehow gained the impression you must be an important contributor to the open source world, not sure doing what or perhaps you will be doing that later. ;D
i herd cats you cant get more open source than that?
Well, guys, this day has come.
NVIDIA Releases Open-Source GPU Kernel Modules (https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-releases-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/)
(Ofc, this is just the first step towards fully operational open source driver for NVidia cards, but this step must be done)
This proves once again that open source is the future of labor relationships and technologies as well, whereas intellectual property over intellectual products only impedes progress and slows down technological and social development.
Did the growing number of Linux gamers who prefer AMD influence this decision ?
I might have misunderstood, because you haven't used the quotes there, but if you care about software freedom, you might want to avoid using misleading terms such as these, as they implicitly support the point of view of companies creating proprietary software.
Software is not the same as material goods, which is the main reason why copying and distribution of software should be legal (currently, it is not for non-Free software).
Also, not all software is made by a company to be sold ("product"). (Also a slippery slope there with "free as in beer" vs "Free as in freedom", or in other words: "zero price" vs "libre".)
The open source driver is in the gremlins repo called
nvidia-open
I suppose, this is partially so. But the gaming in Linux with nvidia is rather OK. Other things are not OK, such as occasional troubles with upgrading kernel, delayed and somewhat incomplete Wayland support, PITA with graphic artifacts after resume from suspend etc. These are common things necessary to have a smoothly working system, which is a prerequisite for actual gaming. Closed source software just doesn't fit well enough into an open source world.
I own a GT 1030, I don't play games much, but I had all this PITA as well. Using my experience with Linux, I managed to build a smoothly running system, but I'm still restricted in my distrohopping possibilities on my actual hardware because of this proprietary piece of crapware. I was to buy an nvidia card, because it was relatively cheap, and AMD alternatives were several times more expensive.
I only use 3D for applications like FreeCAD.
It was catastrophic with a GeForce GT710.
I replaced it with an equivalent and inexpensive AMD Radeon Biostar RX 550 D5 card, and since then I finally have correct and fluid displays. Everything is taken care of by vulkan.
Thank you for the input. Here I try to use the term commonly applied in social sciences, but English is my second language, though. By saying 'product' I imply something what is produced, an outcome, so to say. Not every product meant to be sold. E.g. peasant family in feudal manor produced products, but these were consumed directly either by themselves or by their landlord, without any transitional step represented by a market. Commodities are the products produced with the purpose to be sold on a market. What I wanted to say, is that FOSS is non-commodity production in our capitalistic world, which amazed me the first time when I realized that.
Then, any piece of software licensed under the GPL, is not a subject of intellectual property and cannot be (it has not copyright in the sense that nobody holds the right to copying and therefore nobody can restrict others from using and distributing the software). (Other free licenses like MIT or BSD allow transforming the software into a subject of intellectual property btw). This is the thing which enrages big companies, because they make their profits by exploiting the private intellectual property, and thus spreading of free software undermines their sources of income and power. They nevertheless try to adapt to the changing world and elaborate new sophisticated techniques of exploitation.
I've been pondering over these matters for a while, and I am to write a series of articles or even a book on that. I have some drafts already. And clearing up the terminology is an important part of this work.
These cards are not equivalent. GT 710 is useful as an office stub only. No wonder, it is insufficient against your demands. RX 550 is comparable to GT 1030 and is slightly better and slightly more expensive. I wish I had this one, but when I was building my desktop rig last autumn, they were all sold out, and newer AMD models were far too expensive compared to the nvidia one. BTW I'm completely satisfied with my videocard as a piece of hardware. I is silent, it holds massive heat sinker and it is always cool under additional ventilators I stuck in into my computer case. Nvidia cards were always decent, the only thing that bothers me, it is poor Linux support for them. But things started to change, slowly but steadily. Alas, new open source driver supports only newer cards, 2000 series and higher, so my particular card does not fit.
That's right, the Radeon card is more powerful and cost me 79 Euros (49.17 € for the Nvidia). I never managed to get the Radeon RX550 hotter than 45°C, so the fan never needed to run.
It is regularly out of stock and I had to wait six months to be able to order one.
This is great news that we welcome with caution.
Rx 6400 is likely the best low profile card on the market presently. For the price and power consumption, a g3 elitedesk like the one I bought with an i7 7700 and 16 gb of ram and any nvme drive paired with a 6400 is cheap entry level 1080p medium settings Linux gaming machine despite the card being pcie4. 1050 ti cones in second place I think in price and performance but with amd free drivers I would 6400 even if it were the second best option because I know it will be less trouble for me.