NVIDIA Loses Huge GPU Order Due To Linux Blob

Nvidia is too deeply entrenched in their closed source ways. Not judging them either way and to be honest, I use Nvidia exclusively because it just works (TM) for me, all the time, every time. Of course, YMMV.

But I don't care how much money Nvidia makes or doesn't make. This was a huge hit for them financially. It would be nice if this made a difference in their philosophy and practice concerning open source but it more than likely won't.

Quoting:"Won't make any difference....."

Do you have some inside information or are you just waxing poetic? The IT department only sets the technology agenda when sales and marketing don't have an opinion on the subject. This has been true at any large corporation where I've worked.

Both China (very much so, although not for reasons RMS might approve) and India are huge market that like open source. They are not markets any corporate would like to lose. There is a chance that sanity will break out.

To quote Theodoric of York, "Naaaaw..."

NVidia,... probably with justification,... most likely believed the Chinese would reverse engineer their GPU if they released the sources for their driver... After all, the Chinese produce clones of major automobile manufacturers products, rebadged with similar sounding names... The also do not respect the GPL,... with the exception of Loongson.

Quoting:most likely believed the Chinese would reverse engineer their GPU if they released the sources for their driver

All they need to do that is a GPU or two.

Veto on Phoronix forum wrote:Well, they only need to open the source code for the driver necessary for using their silicon, whereas I believe the silicon source (HDL code) will still be a closely guarded secret. As they make their money on selling the silicon and giving away the driver, they should really try to make it as easy as possible for their users to use their silicon, by open sourcing the driver - that, of course, assuming they even care about other than Windows users..

Although I suspect the driver code represents a significant effort as well as their silicon, it is probably reimplementing the same functionality across the different drivers and really should be much more integrated with the Operating System. GPUs are becoming much more like a computer in itself requiring memory management, scheduling, context switching etc.

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?71744-Nvidia-Loses...

discussion thread : http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/ksummit-2012-dis...

Quoting:All they need to do that is a GPU or two.

True to reverse engineer the hardware, but they also need to reverse engineer the software too for complete functionality.

And, it would be a whole lot easier and faster to complete the reverse engineering if they had the software.

nVidia were caught between a rock and a hard place and they did what they thought is best for themselves.

I don't blame them for keeping their software closed, but I blame them for not furnishing better support for Linux and for not being cooperative with FOSS developers.

A better solution would have been is to enter into a some sort of NDA with FOSS developers or with the Chinese organization.

> True to reverse engineer the hardware, but they also need to reverse engineer the software too for complete functionality. ... And, it would be a whole lot easier and faster to complete the reverse engineering if they had the software.

Nothing prevents them from downloading the software. The just don't have the source. Closed source has never stopped reverse engineering.

> Closed source has never stopped reverse engineering.

..and it's not like the Chinese don't have the resources or the know-how to do it.

Quoting:Nothing prevents them from downloading the software.

Which software? the cra@ppy blob that nVidia releases for Linux? I believe the Chinese are after the code that is optimized for the hardware, they don't want a second grade quality.

Quoting:...and it's not like the Chinese don't have the resources or the know-how to do it.

They do have the resource that no one else has, but it will still take a long time to create decent reverse engineered code. I don't think they want to go that route unless they have to.