Want Nvidia Open-Source drivers? Sign your petition now!

[drascus]

OK So I have been annoyed that there is no open Graphics driver for Nvidia cards. Now that ATI is talking about opening its cards it is a good time to push invidia to do the same out of competition. I did find a petition for pushing Nvidia to open its cards it can be found here: http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/petition.html

you might also consider writing a letter to Nvidia. This would greatly help us with graphics support by Default and also allow the community to independently fix bugs as they arise. Thanks all for your support.

[unknown03]

everyone is too busy thinking about money-money-money-money-money-money-money to realise what good open source can do for the community.. what exactly are they hiding??? malware? lets hope not -- I feel more obligated and less resistant to support open source communities, than i do with hardware vender's trying to keep their crappy drivers secrete -- who only make me irate enough to put on the eye-patch and skull/cross-bones

either way, if nvidia/ati provide open source drivers -- the potential to create personally optimized drivers and incredible coding are endless

[Mr. Picklesworth]

I don't think NVidia has any good code (http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/259617619/article.pl) to hide, so I, too, wonder what they are so concerned about.

[drascus]

I would be happy if the simply released the specs that would allow us to make our own drivers instead of having to rely on theirs.

[unknown03]

-

[tubasoldier]

The biggest problem with that petition, besides the imitrex adverts, is that none of the signers can be verified. If I'm going to sign a petition that I believe in that petition better have a way for the company being petitioned to contact me. I'm not going to sign a petition that does not expect me to let Nvidia verify that I'm a real person and that I only signed it once.

[unknown03]

sooooooo...what your saying is.....DOUBLE POST! HUZZAH! DOUBLE POST EVERYONE! YAY!:lolflag:

[50words]

Isnt it atleast 10,000 names on a petition to file a grievance with the supreme court? or something?

What?

[unknown03]

_

[SunnyRabbiera]

Well if ATI does follow up on its promise to open its drivers I feel nvidia will not be behind for too long.
Linux is a new market for everyone, let people come at their own rate.

[amitabhishek]

I may be naive in asking this... but they do offer restricted drivers. Isn't that enough? Its better than not giving anything at all.

[qazwsx]

Well nv driver is produced by nvidia and it is open. But it performs horribly even in 2D.

Restricted drivers is not enough! Just imagine if you had to install drivers for every piece of hardware into your "Linux-box". My next video card will be ATI if Nvidia is not going to open their specs/drivers. It is so much easier to use Linux without drivers installation hassle.

[VitaLiNux]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/images/nvidia_logo.jpghttp://labor-liber.org/images/gnu-head.jpg
http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/petition.html
To: Nvidia Corp.

The world-wide community of Linux users requests that Nvidia Corp. releases
fully-functional open-source (BSD-licensed) versions of their binary device
drivers, as soon as possible.

At the moment, Nvidia has released its 3-D enabled driver as a binary object
file along with some C wrappers for compatibility, as well as a modified
version of SGI's OpenGL library. While this solution is the best one besides
having an open-source driver, it does have many problems:

1. It subjects X-Window or the entire system to a large number of crashes,
and hang-ups. This is while a system where the drivers are not loaded, works
perfectly for weeks on end. So, if Linux users want to enjoy 3-D games, they
often have to put up with uptimes that make Windows look very stable.

2. It taints the system with non-free kernel modules and libraries. This
prevents getting help from the vendor or from other kernel developers, who
refuse to debug a tainted kernel (and rightfully so).

3. The kernel upgrade process becomes more complicated, as the driver needs
to be re-compiled after the kernel is up, while X needs to be shut down, etc.

4. The build process of the drivers often breaks with some kernel upgrades,
and requires third-party patches. (or even crashes the system after compiling
cleanly - e.g: one page stacks).

5. They don't provide a solution for people who wish to use the cards on
different computer architectures than the ones that Nvidia provides drivers
for. For example, the users of PowerPCs cannot use the 3-D capability of
their cards.

6. There are many other technical problems that often surface.

7. The nvidia engineers that work on the drivers cannot be effectively reached
or contacted.

The current solution offered by Nvidia may be the second-best solution. But
this is one case where the second best solution is not good enough.

The response of the Nvidia engineers to this problem in
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/t253027.html was completely
unsatisfactory. They claimed that they cannot release open source drivers
because "We have lots of IP in our supported closed source Linux driver some
of which is licensed and cannot be open sourced.". Well, if Nvidia has
copyrighted code in its drivers, then they can surely invest some money
in hiring more developers to re-write it. They are a very profitable company,
after all.

So we request that an open-source driver will be released as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, we are going to collect a bounty for reverse-engineering the
Nvidia drivers and releasing an open-source driver based on this effort
(using the open-source Mesa library).

Sincerely,
(YourNameHere)

[Polygon]

petitions don't do anything.

[-grubby]

petitions Don't Do Anything.

+1

[keiichidono]

Even so, i signed it.

[msrinath80]

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/images/nvidia_logo.jpghttp://labor-liber.org/images/gnu-head.jpg
http://www.petitiononline.com/nvfoss/petition.html
To: Nvidia Corp.

The world-wide community of Linux users requests that Nvidia Corp. releases
fully-functional open-source (BSD-licensed) versions of their binary device
drivers, as soon as possible.

At the moment, Nvidia has released its 3-D enabled driver as a binary object
file along with some C wrappers for compatibility, as well as a modified
version of SGI's OpenGL library. While this solution is the best one besides
having an open-source driver, it does have many problems:

1. It subjects X-Window or the entire system to a large number of crashes,
and hang-ups. This is while a system where the drivers are not loaded, works
perfectly for weeks on end. So, if Linux users want to enjoy 3-D games, they
often have to put up with uptimes that make Windows look very stable.

2. It taints the system with non-free kernel modules and libraries. This
prevents getting help from the vendor or from other kernel developers, who
refuse to debug a tainted kernel (and rightfully so).

3. The kernel upgrade process becomes more complicated, as the driver needs
to be re-compiled after the kernel is up, while X needs to be shut down, etc.

4. The build process of the drivers often breaks with some kernel upgrades,
and requires third-party patches. (or even crashes the system after compiling
cleanly - e.g: one page stacks).

5. They don't provide a solution for people who wish to use the cards on
different computer architectures than the ones that Nvidia provides drivers
for. For example, the users of PowerPCs cannot use the 3-D capability of
their cards.

6. There are many other technical problems that often surface.

7. The nvidia engineers that work on the drivers cannot be effectively reached
or contacted.

The current solution offered by Nvidia may be the second-best solution. But
this is one case where the second best solution is not good enough.

The response of the Nvidia engineers to this problem in
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/t253027.html was completely
unsatisfactory. They claimed that they cannot release open source drivers
because "We have lots of IP in our supported closed source Linux driver some
of which is licensed and cannot be open sourced.". Well, if Nvidia has
copyrighted code in its drivers, then they can surely invest some money
in hiring more developers to re-write it. They are a very profitable company,
after all.

So we request that an open-source driver will be released as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, we are going to collect a bounty for reverse-engineering the
Nvidia drivers and releasing an open-source driver based on this effort
(using the open-source Mesa library).

Sincerely,
(YourNameHere)

While I sincerely appreciate the effort you've taken in jotting down all your grievances, I must say that there is little to be gained through such activities.

If there is one definite thing I've realized in life so far, it is that people (myself included) understand the importance of something only when it is taken away from them.

If you really want to send a message to Nvidia, what we as a responsible community (not just one or two people) should be doing is boycotting their products. This will affect them where it hurts most. Sales. Revenue. When they realize that they are losing customers because of their (buggy) binary-only drivers, they will respond accordingly.

How can you do this without sacrificing 3D capabilities?

By supporting hardware manufacturers that provide free (open) drivers, like Intel. You do pay a certain price for reduced 3D performance, but in the long run you will almost certainly benefit.

[Canis familiaris]

Even so, i signed it.

So did I.

[cardinals_fan]

Signed. My reason:

I love NetBSD, and open source NVIDIA drivers could easily be ported to NetBSD.

[perlluver]

I also signed it, if AMD can make drivers for the ATI card open source, I believe Nvidia should be able to also.

[Superkoop]

Signed.

Why? Because it can't hurt.