Opinion: NVIDIA drivers are a Good Thing [tm]

Rui Miguel Seabra rms at 1407.org
Mon May 17 16:56:56 UTC 2004


On Mon, 2004-05-17 at 10:29 -0600, Mark Lane wrote:
> On May 17, 2004 10:27 am, Rui Miguel Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2004-05-17 at 10:23 -0600, Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:
> > > them to open-source their code. I am willing to buy those arguments as
> > > being reasonable; so while I would *prefer* open-source and RPM, I can
> > > *accept* closed-source and custom installer.
> >
> > If you're ready to accept a bad solution you'll hardly ever get the good
> > one, and in this case never since it is near to impossible (for
> > technical reasons) to have good and/or complete Free Software drivers
> > for NVIDIA cards at the moment.
> 
> The drivers are free, they are just not open source.

ATTENTION: I'm not talking about gratis drivers, but of drivers that are
licensed in a way that respects me:

       http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Plus, I don't know what you mean by "open source", do you mean the OSI
definition or some "intuitive" definition that's really prone to error?

Please note that the OSI definition of Open Source tries to define Free
Software by consequences, thus avoiding reference to Freedom, so they
mostly say the same thing, although focusing on different points of
view.

>  The problem with a lot of 
> video cards is that the video card companies tend to license technology from 
> 3rd parties and include that in their cards. So of these licenses are fairly 
> restrictive and don't allow the companies to release information on the 
> technology used, even under NDA.

So it's our (as users) fault that they're not competent enough to make
cards by themselves?

How is it that they're considered good card makers if they don't even do
parts of them?

You should also know that I've already "thrown to the garbage can" a
GeForce 2MX for an ATI 7500 which has Free Software drivers that
implement 3D.

Regards, Rui
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