When Nvidia published their open-source GPU drivers, there was a huge amount of moaning by free software absolutists about how it didn't really count because they just moved a bunch of logic into the firmware, or weren't open-sourcing CUDA, or whatever. Nvidia folks always responded with "our open-source journey is just beginning, but stay tuned!"
I know Nvidia doesn't have a lot of goodwill in the open-source community, but it's good to see that steps in the right direction are continuing!
> there was a huge amount of moaning by free software absolutists
I'm kinda glad that happens, even though I don't participate and the pragmatist in me sometimes disagrees.
I am glad Stallman exists and maintains his ultra-absolutionist hard line. I respect hom greatly for that, and while I often roll my eyes at his intentional foot-gunning of his own use of technology, I also 100% believe he's done an order of magnitude more to improve society than the more pragmatic open source advocates like esr.
In my head, the opposite end of the bellcurve is companies like Oracle. And they're _way_ better funded and more politically powerful than Stallman or esr or the entire "open source" movement put together. Without "extreme fringe wing nut GPL virality advocating loudmouths", Larry Ellison will drag software philosophy "the middle ground" so far to his end that we will all lose out.
So big shoutouts from me to the free software absolutists, even if I don't join in on your chorus (or internet dogpiles). My personal software philosophy probably is grounded in my mid 90's Perl hacking, and I'm very much behind Larry Wall's GPL/Artistic dual license approach. (I do though have ongoing doubts in my head about whether or not the recent spate of "non-open source" licenses aimed at restricting the cloud hyper scalers from SaaS-ing your stuff without contributing anything at all. I respect what they're trying to do at Mongo and Redis. I'm not sure if it will (or even if it should) work.)
> I am glad Stallman exists and maintains his ultra-absolutionist hard line.
I’m glad too. Whenever I read some of his writings, I cannot stop the feeling that he had bee right all along, and had seen most of the current dystopia coming, something like almost 20-30 years before it happened.
So if you have a product that needs a ton of proprietary software to run, RMS will go berserk if you run that software on the CPU, but if you shift it to run on another processor in the product and make sure users can’t change it then all is good, have a RYF certification. This does not make sense. Maybe it made sense 30 years ago.
If you’re stallman, proprietary firmware isn’t bad so long as it’s suitably hidden so it can’t offend your sensibilities. So pretend CPU microcode updates don’t exist and add secondary processors to deal with blobs (purism). Does ensuring users cannot upgrade firmware make them more free?
I agree about the eye rolling absurdity there. But I also suspect stuff like the opening up of various bits of RaspberryPi firmware blobs wouldn’t have happened without people who share his philosophy there. Same with hardware (and software) like Bunnie Huangs Precursor, a piece of as close as practically fully upon source hardware, where the cpu is implemented as an open source FPGA, and the Xous OS for it is written ground up in Rust. That’s a hell of a complex project, and a fascinating , that in my opinion would probably never have been worth anyones time to even start on, if they didn’t share (and possibly exceed) some of Stallman’s philosophical absurdity.
Like I said, I acknowledge the “ extreme fringe wing nut GPL virality advocating loudmouths” and appreciate their existence, if only as a balance to the “make Larry Ellison infinitely rich and powerful” kind of alternatives.
CUDA is their moat and their drivers do add significant value, seemingly more than AMD. So it's reasonable to expect that these won't be open sourced any time soon. Honestly I'm surprised why people expect them to just open source core IP like this.
Personally, my threshold for when they're off the shit-list is when they release the userspace component open source, when they support GBM, and when they stop actively sabotaging Nouveau. Maybe they'll get there, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.
That doesn't mean what they've done so far is insignificant. Being able to run an untainted kernel will be nice (for those running new enough GPUs anyways).
eh I think it's reasonable to have assumed they would continue to hold the stance that they had been holding for years. I'm sure the absolutists you talk about would be happy to be proven wrong.
A lot of people just blindly argue the absolute most negative possible stance period with NVIDIA, that they will never ever do anything positive and any positive stuff that happens doesn't matter at all because of reasons that are invented on the fly.
they open the kernel side? not good enough, they still have blobs (so does AMD) and the userland is still closed (which, so are parts of AMD's as well - the raytracing stuff is all behind closed licenses for example). They added adaptive sync support? Well, why don't they open up g-sync native!? Oh, they did that too? ....
it's similar to the anti-apple set that are just going to shit all over apple regardless of what happens. Apple publishes an API to make Asahi linux's job easier? Not good enough! apple is evil guys!
it's just so tedious and childish, like haha guys did you hear that linus gave NVIDIA the finger? that makes me laugh out loud guys!
> lot of people just blindly argue the absolute most negative possible stance period with NVIDIA, that they will never ever do anything positive and any positive stuff that happens doesn't matter at all because of reasons that are invented on the fly.
I mean, it's been what, 30 years or so during which nvidia did nothing on this front until ~last year? How are you even judging absolutists vs not? There's been no small steps you could judge them by, right?
But ya, I'm _super_ pumped nvidia is heading in the right direction with this stuff, I hope they continue.
Nvidia's hostility to open source and Linux is well known. This is a company that signs code to prevent open source driver development. But now they want a piece of the sweet datacenter revenue, so they have to open up.
Calling a company that released native Linux drivers (even if they're not opensource) with full capabilities "hostile to Linux" is some massive obliviousness. They've been supporting their hardware on Linux as a platform for decades now which is more than almost all other manufacturers.
It's this dumbass hyperbole that really shows just how disconnected from reality a lot of OSS zealots are. Does having nVidia driver be closed source suck? Eyup. Is it "hostility towards Linux" on the levels of other manufacturers that don't even bother to bring up their hardware on the platform? Nope.
I've been buying Nvidia hardware to use with Linux since 2003 since pragmatically it works well but honestly their efforts towards open source are mediocre and unworthy of meaningful praise. While their are only 3 major players in this class its worst in class by a mile.
The combo of hardware/software if using open source drivers isn't worth buying or using. I don't think its at all meaningful to talk about progress until they at least offer something anyone ought to bother using.
I mean if I ordered a nice steak and you served me a literal shoe I wouldn't praise you for remembering to also bring steak sauce.
I know Nvidia doesn't have a lot of goodwill in the open-source community, but it's good to see that steps in the right direction are continuing!