NVIDIA's Andy Ritger On Linux Drivers

tykev writes "The Director of Unix Software at NVIDIA talks about Linux drivers, planned features, development cycle, and the open source Nouveau driver. (The interview is in English but all the comments are in Czech.) Quoting: 'NVIDIA's stance is to neither help nor hinder Nouveau. We are committed to supporting Linux through a) an open source 2d "nv" X driver which NVIDIA engineers actively maintain and improve, and b) our fully featured proprietary Linux driver which leverages common code with the other platforms that NVIDIA supports.'"

Comments

Re:NDAs and Patents Suck Life.

[mikael]

What you say is confusing and has the smell of a well crafted lie. Can you set me straight so I can understand why Nvidia is unable to do like Intel and fully co-operate with the free software community?

Have a look at NVidia's OpenGL specifications web-page

Every extensions comes with an IP Status field. For example ARB_color_buffer_float has the following:

IP Status

        SGI owns US Patent #6,650,327, issued November 18, 2003. SGI
        believes this patent contains necessary IP for graphics systems
        implementing floating point (FP) rasterization and FP framebuffer
        capabilities.

        SGI will not grant the ARB royalty-free use of this IP for use in
        OpenGL, but will discuss licensing on RAND terms, on an individual
        basis with companies wishing to use this IP in the context of
        conformant OpenGL implementations. SGI does not plan to make any
        special exemption for open source implementations.

        Contact Doug Crisman at SGI Legal for the complete IP disclosure.