Sloan wrote:
Aaron Kulkis wrote:
installing an Nvidia driver on your computer doesn't
violate the GPL.
But Nvidia's closed-source driver DOES violate it.
In other words, you're not the criminal, Nvidia is.
Nobody's ever explained to me how that can be.
By the terms of the GPL
If you're not distributing the code, you are
not required you to provide a source for it.
nVidia IS distributing code, therefore they are
required to provide source for it.
> They have tried, but their answers make no sense,
> and fall apart as soon as you take a close look.
I don't see what good this witch hunt can do -
1. nvidia makes video cards.
2. they write drivers for those cards, for windoze, solaris, freebsd and
linux
3. the linux license nazis scream "lawbreaker!"
4. nvidia say "fine, these linux nuts are too much trouble to deal with.
no more linux drivers"
5. the linux license nazis high five each other and do a victory dance
6. linux users are stuck with crappy graphics
7. fade to black
Yeah. The big problem is that these and other
hardware makers seem to think that they're in
the business of selling software, and treat the
specs for writing a driver as if they are the
gravest of all military secrets.
They need to pull their heads out of their
asses. Anybody competent in the art of
designing graphics cards, gpus, and programming
the firmware already knows what's going on --
in fact, we (the computer engineering field)
had most of this stuff worked out 20-30 years
ago -- and we're STILL primarily waiting for
the technology to catch up.
The only secrets are the precise format of
the data being written to/read from the
graphics cards. And all it does is make
the vendors look like paranoid assholes.
Joe
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