nvidia

[Andy Green]

Somebody in the thread at some point said:

> The rule is named "We want to make money from our work and revealing how
> we get our video cards to do what they do (open the source) would allow
> ATI and others to copy our work and cut into any profit'.  ;-)
> 
> Beg. Complain. Threaten. Whine. Do as you wish. It is not going to happen.

I don't really see that -- AMD / ATI supporting FOSS drivers now puts
nVidia in an increasingly lonesome spot.  I'll be avoiding nVidia like
the plague until they also support FOSS drivers, even though in the past
I would certainly have said nVidia would probably be a better choice
when ATI / AMD was also closed.

The nice experiences I have with Intel laptops doing 3D with X with no
meddling or crashes brings it close to my mind how important it is to
have a fully capable FOSS driver.

Apparently the concern historically has been explained that they will
lay themselves open to patent attacks by showing in the source what they
are actually doing.  But ATI / AMD don't seem to feel that is a
problem... they probably have a sackful of bogus patents to whack nVidia
over the head with if there was trouble, and the same in the other
direction.

-Andy