OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list]

[Bryan J. Smith]

From: Paul Iadonisi <pri.rhl4 at iadonisi.to>
>   I recall an analogous example from about four years ago.  I went to
> work for a small (6 or 7 people) software development firm.  I was a
> sysadmin, but played kind of a dual role as backend developer as well.
> I can remember several conversations about what SDK to choose for our
> next feature set and constantly trying to explain to these rather
> uninformed developers of all the available free (many LGPL, so no real
> legal issues there) libraries out there to do what they wanted.  It
> seemed that the immediate response to the question of 'we need a
> development SDK' was, 'who can we buy/license one from'.  My first
> reaction, of course, was to hop over to sourceforge, freshmeat, and
> finally google to find something that did what they wanted, often
> finding better alternatives to the closed ones they wanted to pay an arm
> and a leg for.
>   After a few months of this, I actually had one of the developers
> converted over to the idea of Free Software, and another one amazed at
> how much Free Software there was out there.
>   nVidia chose it's path, and, yes, it's hard to reverse that now.

But you're talking about picking an arbitrary library/SDK for a purpose
where the API may radically differ between the open source and the
proprietary source versions.

nVidia is _already_supporting_ OpenGL on X11 (GLX).  That's the whole
reason many of us had to adopt nVidia in the first place!  Because it
was the only damn viable hardware solution for Linux!  @-ppp

People aren't picking "nVidia-only" application.  They are picking
nVidia to run those _open_standard_ applications on nVidia hardware for
now.  They are _not_ tying themselves into nVidia-only applications.

I think that's the point I keep seeing people miss.  And why the whole
"open" v. "proprietary" can be demonized to make anyone's argument stick
to whatever ideal they want. 

Me?  I'm more interested in using Freedomware where it's viable, and
sticking with Standardware that still mitigates risk when it doesn't.

>   On a related note, I don't know what this whole Fedora Foundation news
> is about specifically, but I do hope one thing.  And that is that the
> Fedora principle of producing a distribution that is completely
> redistributable (both source and binary) without permission from some
> external third party remains an important goal.  There aren't many
> distributions out there that stick to that goal.  Debian is really the
> only one I can think of, at the moment, and I don't want to go there.

And I'll be the first to 100% agree.
I don't recommend people use nVidia drivers.

But I really hate seeing _both_sides_ go at it with *0* understanding
and all sorts of _unrelated_ "open" non-sense.  Like talking about
proprietary libraries, when we're talking just hardware and drivers that
does _open_standard_ GLX!

If I choose nVidia's hardware to run my GLX applications, then I'm _not_
tying myself to nVidia.  I'm only tying myself to GLX applications!

> But it's an important goal for me, and I suspect most of the old timers
> here on these lists (fedora-devel and fedora-test specifically).  To me,
> it gives credence to the likes of SCO if we produce something that is
> not entirely redistributable, but then go ahead and redistribute it
> later.  I don't know the nVidia driver license, but if we go down that
> path, I fear that we will be stepping onto a slippery slope.  (Yes, I do
> see that no one's talking about shipping the nVidia driver, but even
> kowtowing to their whims, or slowness in keeping is going to do nothing
> but slow us down.)

It's not about nVidia.  It's about realizing that what nVidia is sell is
_not_ a "proprietary" solution that only works with "proprietary"
applications.  It is GLX, and it is an open standard.

It's like chastizing someone who uses Macromedia Standardware
applications to produce 100% W3C standards-compliant sites instead of
Freedomware applications.  You may choose not to use Macromedia, but
many of us are very aware of the risks involved, but we have mitigated
those risks by sticking with a vendor who releases software that
supports open standards, or only using that software in those modes.

If there _was_ a Freedomware solution that offered a similar, _viable_
capability, we would.  But don't lump us into the same category as
someone who blindly uses Frontpage.  Which is what I meant about the who
"there are only 2 absolutes" non-sense.

To me, it's not about some ideology, although that does come into play.
It's about balancing feasibility against risk.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                     b.j.smith at ieee.org 
--------------------------------------------------------------------- 
It is mathematically impossible for someone who makes more than you
to be anything but richer than you.  Any tax rate that penalizes them
will also penalize you similarly (to those below you, and then below
them).  Linear algebra, let alone differential calculus or even ele-
mentary concepts of limits, is mutually exclusive with US journalism.
So forget even attempting to explain how tax cuts work.  ;->