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

Move along, nothing to see here

[dfdashh]

Still no 3D support without having to use a proprietary (closed) driver. Wake me up when that changes.

A question

[Fross]

Why do you _expect_ a company to do business according to your own rules?

Sure, you can vote with your wallet, but it seems to me demanding that a company release their drivers in open source (and let's not forget, that probably contains a vast amount of work they spent their own R&D budget on) is expecting a huge amount of work from them, in return for a small amount of convenience for you.

I'm just wondering why so many open source users have disdain for companies not open sourcing their software when it is potentially against their aims to do so. I mean, to the exclusion of actually using the software which could make their computer experience better. Surely we haven't got that many mini-RMSes?

Re:A question

[Ash Vince]

Finish the troll with a flourish. Nice work.

I saw nothng in the parent post suggesting the poster was a troll. You post sounded more like one.

On the subject of RMS though, does he actually contribute any code to any projects or do anything usefull or is he just a worthless commie who whines about other poeple not having the same political outlook as him using Linux.

(That was a troll!)

Blah

[nrgy]

I hate seeing these kind of topics because they always turn into a flame war. I've been using linux as my only operating system for four years straight now and I could realy give a rats ass about whether a driver or program is open source or not. Its pretty sad that you have this vocal hippy crowd that are like children and if something good doesn't have it's source code available then its the work of Satan. Now I've never had a single problem with Nvidias linux drivers but that being said I'm sure their are some. Please stfu with the "See if it were open source the bugs would of already been fixed" shit, if a bug were as simple to fix as you try and act like it is then don't you think Nvidia would already have done it? Like I said really don't give a damn about open or closed because regardless of which of the two it is you WILL have bugs. As much as you would like to think open source is a mega god and suddenly turns a program or driver into a piece of bug free code because so many people will be able to see it, well I'm sorry to say your wrong. It's pretty sad now a days that just supporting linux with a driver or port of an application isn't enough, no the hippies also want access to your bread and butter to. Every time linux gains an inch these zealots run out asking for 3 more, well you can't have it all so fuckn deal with it. I've come to realize this vocal "ZOMGBBSAUCE EVERYTHING HAS TO BE OPEN SOURCE" crowd is nothing more then people that can't fully do something themselves so they want to milk off of someone else's work and have them do it for them. Mod me flaimbait all you want I could care less. I'm a linux user not because I follow some open source screwed up religion, I like the idea of open source but at the same time I'm sane enough to realize its not the only option. I don't play in the middle ages like some of you do, forcing people to convert to your way just because they play in the same sandbox.

Re:Nouveau

[voxel]

You're little "complex" broadcom reverse engineering project is but a spec of paint on the moon that orbits our planet earth in terms of complexity when compared to the multi-megabyte nvidia driver binaries.

You silly little man.