NVIDIA Licence Update (Linux Exception)

(startx) writes "I don't know how long this has been the case, but with the latest NVidia driver update comes a new installation method, which unifies the installation process almong all Linux distributions. Just for kicks I re-read the licence, and it has a new section labeled "2.1.2 Linux Exception" Basically GNU/Linux users are now free to redistribute the driver file. Not only this, but the FAQ section of the README file says you can redistribute in whatever form necessary, stating distributions are welcome to include it as a package as well. Woohoo!"

Comments

Great

[Apreche]

Great, they do this just AFTER I upgrade to Mandrake 9.1. If they would have done this before then it probably would have been included in the distro.

Excellent!

[Trogre]

This will be a great help for distro packagers. Not the least of which, Knoppix would finally be able to play OpenGL games (Chromium!) straight out-of-the-box.

I applaud nVidia for their continuing support for Linux.

Like many others, I would be happier if the drivers were open-sourced, but realise that there is so much licensed technology in these cards, that getting permission from all the IP holders would be impossible, even if nVidia wanted to release the source.

Well done, nVidia.

Re:Don't fool me ...

[ComputerSlicer23]

I don't think NVidia would fool around with a legal document. Some one could actually use it in a court of law, as a legally published document. That'd be relatively stupid, the legal department will have somebody's head on a platter for doing it. About the only thing I can see is that the documented last change is Mar 27th. I suppose if the license could be for a revision that doesn't exist. So I'm guess that it is real, if it's an April 1 day joke, it's a very, very good one. I don't have the time to try installing the stupid thing to see if it blows up badly, like the Engineers had a field day building a broken driver to make me feel the fool. However, the dates are all older (and they display very funny, look at the 103 as the year, and the negative hours).

Kirby

Re:Not quite fully automated install yet....

[moncyb]

My guess they do it because they're afraid they may hose the config file. Let's face it, text config files can be problematic. One has to go to the effort of creating parse routines (easy in perl, but not it C), many of the files have their own format, and there is always the risk of misparsing part of it. Then to change one setting, the most simple way is often to just rewrite the entire file. Not an easy task, and an error in any step may hose the entire thing...

The M$ registry sucks, but at least it has an api (so you don't have to write all the code to read / change settings) and it is binary (so you only need to lock part of the file, and you don't have to rewrite all or most of the file just to change a single setting--assuming M$ didn't screw the design up, I don't know much about the arcane internals of the thing.

Using text files for configuration has advantages--such as being human readable--but it makes programming more difficult.

They seem to have a clue

[tunah]

This reinforces my impression of NVidia as a hardware company that knows it's a hardware company.

I was pleasantly surprised back when I got my new computer with a TNT2 that they provided nice (in my experience) fast 3D drivers. They haven't subscribed to the whole open-source/free software philosophy, they're just being smart. Giving source for their drivers may have some benefits, may have some costs, may not be possible for legal reasons. Giving away binary drivers makes sense - you're quite likely to influence a linux user's video card purchase with decent drivers. Making people download it from their website, or install it differently from any other package is just a pain in the ass and doesn't gain them anything.

There's no altruism here, just common sense. What's surprising is that so many big hardware manufacturers make things so hard.

Re:Not quite fully automated install yet....

[ichimunki]

Right answer, but for the wrong reasons I suspect.

Since most installs are done via shell script or makefile, it's not like this would be that hard to program-- sed or perl are likely to be involved and this isn't tough for either of them. I know it's not as simple as s/nv/nvidia/, but it's not that hard to make sure you only change the right lines and nothing else.

The real problem is finding the right config file to change. Are they in /etc or maybe /etc/X11 or perhaps /usr/X11R6/etc/X11 or any of the other locations (some of which are dynamic) listed at http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/4.3.0/XF86Config.5.h tml. Compound this with the fact that different users may have different relevant config files of their own and you have a problem that the Windows registry probably can't solve either.

Also, in this case, only X, one of its utilities, or the driver install are going to need access to the config file, so locking the whole file isn't an issue. You probably want the whole file locked during driver install, but this wouldn't prevent you from messing with other config files at the same time-- if you can find them ;).