I would not expect the userland to be released ever. It is the nvidia’s secret sauce doing all of the heavy lifting of implementing opengl/directx/vulkan and fixing various apps’ mistakes.
I also don’t think this release is related to the hack in more than timing coincidence. Grapevine says they’ve wanted to release kernel bits for long time but red tape was there.
It’s very not related. Any leaked materials from them would be legally extremely toxic. AMD would not allow anyone employed to read them, and anyone trying to do independent development based on it would get sued by NVIDIA. Even reactos had a “can’t contribute if you’ve read the leaked windows source” rule.
Was that the catch? If there had to be one, this actually makes me very relieved, happy and carefully positive to Nvidia again. Because in terms of what to fix first, the kernel module was always the problem, as far as I understand.
As a desktop user, all I want is to not have driver problems. Most importantly, to not have my desktop replaced with text on a black screen ever again – the single reason I have avoided Nvidia for a decade now. This used to happen every kernel upgrade.
it’s really not - they moved huge amount of logic into their firemware, so essentially now they get to use GPL only APIs from their closed source logic. The Asahi Linux folk compared similarly capable M1 GPU drivers, that don’t have the same GPL circumvention - 400k firmware vs. 34Mb firmware. It’s pretty clear that the Nvidia “open source” is simply an exercise in branding and circumventing licensing restrictions.
Sadly, it’s just the in-kernel bits; the userspace blobs are all still proprietary.
It also somehow doesn’t cover actually using your GPU to display graphics on a screen, so don’t get your hopes up.
https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2022/05/11/why-is-the-open-source-driver-release-from-nvidia-so-important-for-linux/
For now. If this is related to the previous hack, it wouldn’t be surprising if at least a subset of userspace bits follow down the line.
I would not expect the userland to be released ever. It is the nvidia’s secret sauce doing all of the heavy lifting of implementing opengl/directx/vulkan and fixing various apps’ mistakes.
I also don’t think this release is related to the hack in more than timing coincidence. Grapevine says they’ve wanted to release kernel bits for long time but red tape was there.
It’s very not related. Any leaked materials from them would be legally extremely toxic. AMD would not allow anyone employed to read them, and anyone trying to do independent development based on it would get sued by NVIDIA. Even reactos had a “can’t contribute if you’ve read the leaked windows source” rule.
Never claimed it was leaked. It’s obviously not. I’m suggesting that this may be the result of negotiation with the hackers.
No, I get it. I’m saying NVIDIA has no business negotiating. Leaks wouldn’t really hurt it and complying wouldn’t guarantee anything.
Was that the catch? If there had to be one, this actually makes me very relieved, happy and carefully positive to Nvidia again. Because in terms of what to fix first, the kernel module was always the problem, as far as I understand.
As a desktop user, all I want is to not have driver problems. Most importantly, to not have my desktop replaced with text on a black screen ever again – the single reason I have avoided Nvidia for a decade now. This used to happen every kernel upgrade.
Apologies for shamelessly stealing the HN thread (feel free to dock me karma for that, I probably deserve it), but honestly this is pretty cool news.
For those interested, the driver sources are available on github, and are MIT licensed (dual licensed when distributed as a linux kernel module).
it’s really not - they moved huge amount of logic into their firemware, so essentially now they get to use GPL only APIs from their closed source logic. The Asahi Linux folk compared similarly capable M1 GPU drivers, that don’t have the same GPL circumvention - 400k firmware vs. 34Mb firmware. It’s pretty clear that the Nvidia “open source” is simply an exercise in branding and circumventing licensing restrictions.
Merge with https://lobste.rs/s/5vdubs/nvidia_transitioning_official_open?
One more step towards a more open interaction between FOSS and historically hostile companies. Really happy this is happening.