OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list] -- nVidia doesn't own a lot of the IP

[Paul Iadonisi]

On Thu, 2005-06-09 at 16:35 -0500, Bryan J. Smith  wrote:
> From: Denis Leroy <denis at poolshark.org>
> > Yup that's likely, and if they opened the code, we'd still have our
> > hands tied like with the MP3 code.
> > OTOH, there's a trend lately of companies "pledging" their patents to
> > the Open Source community (Nokia, CA, IBM...). Would it help if Nvidia
> > did the same ?
> 
> The problem is that you assume nVidia actually _owns_ the IP.
> They do _not_.  ATI is in the same boat, that's why they are now
> doing a unified driver.  Matrox has been the same as well.
> 
> nVidia, Matrox and others have gotten themselves in some messy
> legal issues for code release in the past.  So either you create an
> independent, "clean room" version, or you're at the mercy of the
> IP holders.
> 
> I see the first major IP battle in the 3D space.  And companies like
> nVidia, SGI and Sun will be our allies against the biggest IP leech
> of them all in the OpenGL space ...
> 
> Microsoft.

  If I saw nVidia and ATI maybe actively participating in the antitrust
case against Microsoft in the EU and joining NoSoftwarePatents.com then
I'd be willing to cut them some slack.  And take a stand against the
current patent system in the US.  That goes for any other company that
is in this kind of mess.  Otherwise, they are just playing the victims.
Or perhaps it isn't them painting *themselves* as victims.  But if they
expended the resources necessary to *change* this mess more than in
their cloistered little worlds (with the resulting limited effect) then
maybe we'd get somewhere.

-- 
-Paul Iadonisi
 Senior System Administrator
 Red Hat Certified Engineer / Local Linux Lobbyist
 Ever see a penguin fly?  --  Try Linux.
 GPL all the way: Sell services, don't lease secrets