
Nvidia to release documentation on Nouveau project - throwaway2048
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/nouveau/2013-September/014480.html
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jrockway
I think the reality is that most software engineers are starting to get tired
of Windows and OSX, and the kind of people nVidia wants to hire don't want to
contribute proprietary blobs to Linux when they can just work for the
competition on open-source stuff. Thus, nVidia is kind of forced by the market
to let the engineers make at least token contributions to Linux.

(This is also why DRM never works; the type of person that could implement it
correctly wouldn't want to implement it correctly.)

~~~
conductor
Writing code that goes into proprietary software is like writing a book which
can read only your editor. Programming (at least in some areas) is like art,
you want the world to see your code, what you've done there. Give me a name of
one famous programmer. I bet he is writing free and open source software.

~~~
stephencanon
"famous" != "great". For every famous programmer who cares about recognition
and does open-source stuff to get her name out there, there's a great
programmer who cares more about getting paid to do awesome things, and isn't
particularly concerned with public recognition. There are thousands of
astoundingly good programmers who you have never heard of, and many of them
are working on closed-source projects.

~~~
vpmulhuw
You, for example, are one of them.

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thejosh
After Steam announced steambox, and with the massive improvements since Steam
for Linux, nVidia would want their drivers to be the best for Linux to sell
Linux users on their video cards.

~~~
tete
I remember, long ago when the Linux community was much smaller everyone wanted
a killer feature so hardware vendors would do something like this. Never
thought something like Steam could be such a killer feature.

~~~
devx
Gaming is definitely a "killer app" of any platform. Heck, there are devices
out there with platforms that only do _that_ , and they are very successful.
I'm talking about consoles, obviously.

Microsoft realized this a long time ago, and so did Apple (starting with iOS
only). It took Google even more years after that to finally put 2 and 2
together, and realize that the reason why so many still choose iOS over
Android is because of gaming.

Same goes for Facebook with Farmville, and so on. So yeah, if you want a very
successful platform/OS, definitely focus on gaming as much as you can. It's
what brings the "mainstream" in.

~~~
masklinn
> Microsoft realized this a long time ago, _and so did Apple_ (starting _with
> iOS_ only)

This is a common misconception nowadays, but if you look at the early keynotes
Jobs was more dismayed than thrilled by his baby being coopted by games. He
resigned himself more than realized it.

It just happens that — on iOS anyway — gaming concerns and Apple concerns
align in that both want a good equilibrium between CPU and GPU rather than a
CPU-focused device.

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surrealize
After the "Linus flipping off Nvidia" thing, one of the Nvidia people asked
what they could do better on a linux mailing list. Matthew Garrett responded,
"Move your 3D driver to userspace and use nouveau for command submission." [1]
I thought that would be a marked improvement over the status quo; keeping the
proprietary stuff out of kernel-space would make things so much easier.

I hadn't seen any possibly-relevant follow-ups until now though. Here's
hoping!

[1] [http://lists.linux-
foundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-2012-dis...](http://lists.linux-
foundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-2012-discuss/2012-June/000336.html)

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blinkingled
This, again, doesn't really mean anything. Nvidia did the 2D only nv driver
for the same reasons - to make their GPUs usable out of the box on Linux. Now
instead they are doing documenation that someday will help do the same but
using nouveau driver and the community's efforts.

The key areas where the documentation will be needed and have impact - power
management and clocking, 3D stuff etc. - Nvidia isn't promising anything on
that. If they hired a bunch of OSS developers and promised to release all docs
eventually like AMD that would be news.

So no Nvidia - I am still not buying anything you sell.

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zurn
There have been these baby steps lately, enabling the 2d support on the tegra
2 and now supporting "out of the box" functionality (i guess getting a
functioning 2d desktop). I wonder what the relationship is with their stance
on 3D support. These aren't really contradicting the proprietary driver
monopoly on 3D acceleration that they like to keep.

~~~
stormbrew
Could it be they hope to offload the basic driver support to an open source
project, especially with the shift towards DRI/DRM, and they plan to move the
proprietary 3d support to a blob attached at the mesa layer? I feel like this
would be a positive move overall, even if it's not completely ideal.

~~~
swetland
That's the model we've ended up with with most of the mobile GPU drivers in
Android -- open source kernel side managing resources and queueing and
proprietary goop in a library in userspace where it can do limited harm (can't
crash the kernel, clobber arbitrary memory, etc). Not as nice as a 100% open
driver, but a massive improvement over proprietary binary glop in the kernel.

~~~
exDM69
> Not as nice as a 100% open driver, but a massive improvement over
> proprietary binary glop in the kernel.

FWIW, the most of the Nvidia proprietary driver works in a user space library
too. It would be a really bad idea to make your OpenGL implementation and
other high-level facilities running in kernel space.

~~~
duaneb
Unfortunately, it's the drivers that are the issue. I have no doubt the open
source community could at least maintain nvidia's code for them.

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tete
This is amazing. Well, not really as amazing anymore from a technical
perspective, but the Nouveau-Project, which had a really hard road came into
existence because such a move seemed to be impossible, back then.

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devx
Other than inertia, and an overrated idea that proprietary drivers give you a
"competitive advantage" over your competitors' very different hardware, why
aren't more manufacturers making open source firmware for their hardware?

Especially after the NSA scandal, we should really demand open source firmware
from hardware manufacturers with every chance we get.

~~~
exDM69
> Other than inertia, and an overrated idea that proprietary drivers give you
> a "competitive advantage" over your competitors' very different hardware,
> why aren't more manufacturers making open source firmware for their
> hardware?

While this is arguably true for most hardware, GPUs are different from mundane
hardware like ethernet adapters. The driver source code will reveal secrets
about the hardware architecture, and the architecture changes in every
generation. The advantage is not in the software itself, it is not showing the
cards you are playing with.

In theory, it would be possible to give out the source code to the video
drivers but it would not make sense to give out the source for chips in
development. At best, you could get source code dumps after a new chip has
rolled out. This is not really open source.

Yes, I want quality open source video drivers but on the other hand I want
bleeding edge hardware and competition that drives hardware development.

Disclaimer: I write GPU drivers for living and I'm an open source enthusiast.

~~~
devx
I'm fine with them releasing the source after the chip is out (why would I
need the driver before the chip is out?!) - just not _3 years later_ , like
they're basically doing with Tegra 2 drivers now.

~~~
damien
You need the driver before the chip is out so that your favorite distro
already supports it when you buy that new GPU card.

~~~
bigdubs
Why can't you ship a basic driver with the kernel that is guaranteed to work
with all modern video cards, and then have a website download board specific
driver when it comes out? (i.e. the current situation on windows anyway)

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mortdeus
I just hope nvidia builds wayland support into their proprietary drivers. I
mean if nvidia chooses not to support nouveau as their main DRI drivers, thats
fine. However the least they can do is make sure they do as much as they can
to invest in Linux moving forward and not force users (and app developers) to
make painful decisions regarding whether they should use the proprietary
drivers or nouveau.

For example if nvidia decides to focus and invest all their effort solely into
mir and unity support for their closed drivers, thus giving everybody who
backs wayland the shaft in the process, its going to end up being a major
problem for developers like myself. Philosophically and pragmatically.

~~~
zanny
Well, as someone who should understand the value of free software, it is kind
of your fault for buying a part from a company who has never supported foss
before, and this move is quite a change of pace from them.

If they pull an AMD, except they do it right (ie, just depreciate the
proprietary driver for enterprise compute usage and focus entirely on making
gallium great) they have my business forever.

I'm thinking of getting a tegra note next month, on the pretense that at least
Nvidia provides open source Tegra drivers through a 3rd party so that the
platform is hackable. The new Nexus 7 is a disgrace since smart people have to
waste their time reverse engineering the gpu in the Snapdragon because
Qualcomm is being a dick.

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drill_sarge
So Nvidia is now doing what AMD is doing with their engagement on freedesktop
and kernel recently? Good step but it's not the "breakthrough" like all the
news sites are trying to make this up.

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RamiK
Check out the base directory: ftp://download.nvidia.com/open-gpu-doc/DCB/1/

That Thumbs.db pretty much says it all :)

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shmerl
At last. This is great news.

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Finster
This isn't in reaction to Valve's SteamOS announcement, is it?

