If they dont' respond you might want to take a look on duke of url at
http://dukeofurl.dhs.org/reviews/misc/nvidialinux/
Basically they can't opens ource the drivers beacuse they contain
intellectual property protected by NDAs.
Alex
- Original Message -
From: Tim
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:38 PM
Subject: [Cooker] Open Sourcing your drivers
We all know that the Nvidia line of video cards are growing in popularity
and that they are indeed some of the best cards out on the market. However,
I believe you are missing out on a bigger share of sales due to the closed
nature of your driver developement. Allowing your drivers to go to the Open
Source community would benefit NVidia as much as it would the consumers.
Imagine the improvements that could be made upon the drivers at no cost to
your company... Bugs would be ironed out, performance increased, and sales
would go up. Adopting a closed source policy, not unlike Microsoft's, puts a
limit on the growth of your company is a now largely open source arena.
Currently, I run Linux Mandrake on my computer and I have a GeForce2 GTS
video card that I do like a lot. There was a time however, when I was
planning on ditching this GeForce for the sole reason that it was not
supported by Linux. With IBM's business machines and workstations switching
over to Linux in the next year or so, making open source drivers available
could greatly increase the sales of your Quadra line as well. I'm sure many
people have contacted you about allowing open source drivers, but I believe
that each voice in support of it should be heard. I keep up with the email
list from the Linux Mandrake Devel/Beta team and I have seen a large number
of emails lately about putting NVidia drivers into the distribution. Alas,
this will not be possible until you allow others to view/edit the source
code and distribute it freely so as to benefit the users of your product. I
would appreciate a response to this email from someone in the company so I
know whether or not to look for NVidia products in the future or to warn my
clients against them due to the lack of cooperation in helping the customers
get the best performance from the product. Hopefully some agreement can be
made between us, the users and programmers of open source code, and your
terrific company.
Thank you for your time,
--
Tim McKenzie
Appalachian State University
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
Quoted from NVidia's Website
"NVIDIA's mission is to be the most important 3D graphics company in the
world. Learn more about our company history, culture, and commitment to
community. "
Wouldn't it be great to have the entire open source community standing
behind your products and creating a better experience for each and every
user? Open Source seems to be the future of programming and the home use of
Linux is growing at an astounding pace. Allowing open source NVidia drivers
would definately help push the company into the spotlight.
