Kernel Builders Appeal For Open Source Drivers

snydeq writes "The Linux kernel development community has released a statement emphasizing the need for open source drivers. The statement, signed by 135 developers, is aimed at preventing future vendors from following the closed source path. One holdout cited is Nvidia. The Linux Foundation has also released a statement in support: 'The Linux Foundation recommends that hardware manufacturers provide open source kernel modules. The open source nature of Linux is intrinsic to its success. We encourage manufacturers to work with the kernel community to provide open source kernel modules in order to enable their users and themselves to take advantage of the considerable benefits that Linux makes possible.'"

Comments

No Linus?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Interesting that Linus himself did not put his name to the statement.
One might argue that the Linux Foundation's endorsement is sufficient and that Linus's signature would be redundant.
But if that were true, why did Theodore Ts'o put his name on the statement? He is part of the Foundation's management.

I don't understand nVidia

[cerberusss]

I don't understand nVidia and other companies. One of the arguments is that the driver makes the difference between higher- or lowerpriced cards, thus open-sourcing this stuff will make the differences go away. Now I've worked with hardware engineers making FPGAs and ASICs -- I don't see why these graphics cards simply read their config from an EPROM or a small piece of flash, thus letting the driver not make any difference at all.

Re:I don't understand nVidia

[s4m7]

EPROM costs more than software bits. Besides, EPROMs are easily hacked too.

Re:I don't understand nVidia

[Sycraft-fu]

No the driver doesn't make the difference between high and low end cards. There is always a BIOS change at a minimum (videocards have their own BIOS). There are three reasons why nVidia claims they can't open source their drivers:

1) They incorporate third party proprietary code. This is almost certainly the case. I'm betting that some or maybe even all of it isn't secret, but it is still licensed none the less. That means they'd have to either change the driver to leave those features out and/or rewrite the code themselves which could involve some expensive clean room/dirty room techniques. Remember that they can't play the Xvid game of "Well we don't distribute it compiled so don't need to pay a license." Ya that won't won't work for a company who is providing the code for the clear purpose of making their cards work. They'd get sued (and they'd lose).

2) Their drivers are one of the things that make their cards more attractive than their competition. nVidia and ATi are locked in a major battle for computer marketshare. This is fought in terms of performance, whether raw performance at the high end or performance per dollar in the midrange. They are interested in every advantage they can get over one another. Well those advantages can come in software as well as hardware. For example nVidia has historically had very good OpenGL performance on Windows. All things being equal, an app would run equally well in either. ATi has not, DirectX has always performed better. Well if ATi got at nVidia's source, maybe they'd use those tricks to make their drivers perform better.

3) Special things like PhysX support. Coming out very soon (you can already find betas floating about) for Windows are drivers that will support hardware acceleration of the PhysX physics middleware engine on GeForce 8 and up cards. nVidia bought Ageia and has been working on this. They intend to use it to help move graphics cards. So game devs buy PhysX to handle their physics. Unreal Engine 3 uses it, for example, it is a major competitor to Havok. Well then those games will be able to have special hardwrae accelerated feature if they want... on nVidia cards. You have an ATi card you are out of luck. Of course if they GPL'd all that, ATi could take it and use it. They'd have to release any modifications, but they could still nab all the code and make their cards also do PhysX.

Now I'm not saying any of these are reasons you should agree with, please don't argue with me about them I don't work for nVidia I'm not making the rules. I'm just trying to help you understand why they aren't interested in open sourcing their drivers. With something like a network card or RAID controller, the drivers are generally pretty simple and are just a tool to make the hardware work. Thus there isn't really anything in them to protect and most companies probably wouldn't mind them being open if they really stopped to think about it. Their competitors would gain nothing from selling them anyhow.

That's not the case for GPU drivers. They are a large part of the picture in terms of performance and user experience. Thus improvements to them can give your cards a competitive edge over the others and thus nVidia isn't so interested in releasing them. Hell it can be real simple things sometimes. I used to have an LCD monitor with no scaler controls. What that meant was any image you fed it that was not at its native resolution, it stretched without regard for aspect ratio to full screen. That sort of thing bugs the shit out of me. I want aspect correct scaling. However, it wasn't a problem. nVidia cards can handle that, and I just told my card to do it.

At the time though, ATi cards couldn't (dunno how it stands now). That means that I more or less had to write off ATi so long as I kept that particular monitor. I wanted a feature that only nVidia could deliver. If nVidia's drivers had been open source, well perhaps ATi could have just grabbed the scaling code (it seemed to be driver based, not hardware based) and used it.

So it is a complex situation. I'm not defending nVidia's handling of it, just trying to help you understand why they do as they do.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[techno-vampire]

My sister preferred buying a new printer. Then, after she'd gotten her new printer working, she donated the old one to LASFS, this world's oldest Science Fiction Club, to be sold at auction. She got a new printer, somebody else got a used one with plenty of life in it, and the club got some money. A real win/win/win situation.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[netcrusher88]

I think you can bend that rule a bit when you're giving away a scarce product as opposed to an infinitely reproducible product, but good point nonetheless.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[Anonymous Coward]

A binary driver is worse than no driver, because it removes much of the incentive to write a Free one.

But anyway, for printers, HP is the way to go!

Re:Wrong approach

[Zero__Kelvin]

When a moron like The_Abortionist posts something so obviously absurd, I find it helps to look at the users comment history. One look makes it clear that s/he is intentionally trying to get the worst ever history. -1 and 0 for every post. Sometimes I ask people if they go to a special class to sound like a moron, or if it just comes naturally. Now I know who runs the special classes :-)

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[jimicus]

You mustn't confuse Lexmark Inkjet printers with Lexmark Laser printers.

The laser printers, by and large, speak well-known and reasonably standard languages like Postscript and HP PCL, and the build quality isn't too bad (though it's not a patch on HP or Kyocera).

The inkjets speak proprietary languages, are cheaply thrown together and designed to last about as long as 2-3 cartridges.

(And in the UK, Lexmark make a big thing about how you too can buy a printer from the same company that supplies 70% of the UK's top businesses. Technically correct, but it's a totally different division of the company producing totally different products).

This is bullshit

[jopet]

While I like the idea of open source and develop nearly exclusively open-source myself, i find it counterproductive to insist on open-source drivers. This is not a religious war, or should not be. This should be about pragmatically doing everything to create a useful alternative to other OS. This should be about making Linux successful.

It simply will never happen that we get open-source drivers for all the hardware Windows users are enjoying. Make it as easy as possible to get *any* form of driver, make it so that binary drivers cannot kill the system and it will still be difficult to get enough drivers to not make users shy away from Linux.

Then, when we have 50% market share you can start putting pressure on hardware vendors, not now.

Re:Dell printers (re-branded Lexmark hardware)

[SanityInAnarchy]

Question: Why didn't Mom buy her Dell with Ubuntu instead? That way, at least there'd be someone to call when you have these issues.

Perhaps a different question...

[transiit]

I'm seeing a lot of these responses get hung up on their personal idealism. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt that there is no significant astro-turfing going on here.

But after seeing a multitude of responses suggesting the complexity of graphics cards above all other device drivers, I sort of wonder: Are we believing a myth?

I see countless articles about how GPUs are such advanced pieces of tech. I see tons of anecdotal evidence about how more optimized they are.

But after years of hearing how good Card A is against Card B at API X vs API Y, I sort of wonder...wow, what a coincidence that both happen to be really good at their next possible market.

Device drivers are tricky business, no question. All I ever seem to see is the same arguments from interested passers-by explaining how they couldn't open up their drivers because they'd give away some secret, or there's no incentive to give away their secret sauce because they've spent so much more time and money than some other specialized sector.

I think at this point, I'd be as happy to see these companies open up their specs to the point of third-party ground-up implementations as I would hearing one of them go on the record as to their reasons why they feel they can't.

How does that work?

[Anonymous Coward]

"worried competitors will use their own tricks against them."

The tricks can't be used against them, unless someone writes a trojaned driver for their card.

If the tweaks are hardware dependant, they can only be used on a card that copies the same hardware.

Besides, do you think that ATI doesn't have the capability to strip out the hardware design and reverse engineer NVidia's cards? NVidia can just as easily take from ATI's cards.

Unless they are patented. Or copyrighted.

And if they ARE patented/copyrighted rather than trade secret, there's no loss in releasing the information under the GPL, because your competitor can't improve YOUR code without improving the code for YOU.

Free development, in other words, from your competitor(s).

"incorporate third party code"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, NVidia USED to say that. They said it was stuff by SGI.

When SGI were talked to, they said that nothing NVidia had from them they have a problem with GPLing. So either

a) They lied
b) They have stuff from SGI that they are hiding because they haven't paid for it
c) They have another reason for it

Now NVidia don't say this any more, just fans of NVidia. Even if NVidia did say, they won't say any more WHOSE IP they have so we can ask this supplier about it.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[inasity_rules]

Add SIS to that list please! I want accelaration on my legacy card. They ignored my emails, but they seem to make it hard to contact them. Anyone have a correct email address?

Linux needs to work better with proprietary

[Toreo asesino]

I can take a nvidia driver built 8 years ago and still load it into Windows today, unmodified. I can install Windows 2000 (no SP), and upgrade to Windows XP SP3 and that same driver will work just the same. Not all drivers of course, but most. Generally, drivers in Windows get refreshed every 5-10 years. If I upgrade my linux kernel a single version in Ubuntu my proprietary nvidia drivers break instantly.

I think it's unreasonable to expect every hardware vendor to provide open-source drivers (even if it would benefit the users); so in my mind, Linux needs to get better at binary compatibility as well as focussing on making the open-source drivers real good.

Yep ditched my NVidia 64bit mobo...

[TooTechy]

because the nvidia sata drivers just are not stable enough. A box that crashes every month or so is not reliable enough.

Now the lovely 64bit Intel replacement board is as solid as a rock.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[Spy der Mann]

Consumer-level printers get replaced very frequently.

Because they were designed that way! Once, we sent our Samsung for repair. The repairman told us that they got broken very frequently, and he recommended us to get an HP instead. So we went to the store, and the salesman told us that HP printers got broken very frequently. He recommended us to get a Samsung instead! :(

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[Gazzonyx]

Yeah, if their open source drivers are like their Windows drivers, they'll install themselves as root and remove entries for starting, restarting and stopping the service under /etc/init.d (for you SysV guys) or /etc/rc.d (for the BSD guys).

Seriously, HP drivers install themselves in Windows as a service that cannot be stopped or removed by even an admin account. You have to do the old 'at time /interactive cmd.exe' hack, and then crash it and restart it thing to become Local System, just to stop the service.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[tlhIngan]

Or you could buy a printer that supports PostScript.

Does such a thing exist for less than, say, $250?

I know that last time I looked, I had to give up Postscript to get a (network, laser) printer in my price range. I ended up with Brother HL-2070N, which is okay except that it still seems to require a driver on each client even when printing over the network, and it supports PCL instead of Postscript.

For the Brother line of printers, you want support for "BrScript" (BrotherScript) - for PostScript 3, it's called "BrScript 3". It's effectively a PostScript clone (since PostScript is trademarked, and Brother does't want to pay). But for all intents and purposes, it's PostScript. They even supply PPD files to configure your OS's PostScript driver correctly.

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[Bert64]

I haven't tried their windows drivers, but the mac ones were pretty bad.
The open source ones on the other hand, really are just drivers that interface with cups and/or sane, and other than that pretty much just get out of your way. No stupid utility programs, no background services... Seeing as they're open source, if such user hostile functionality ever existed in them, someone would soon strip it out anyway.

I will however look at Brother printers, since someone pointed out they also make open source drivers available.

Re:License?

[BrainInAJar]

Yes. Fellow by the name of Masayuki Murayama was writing NIC drivers for Solaris using the Linux drivers as reference. He received legal threats as a result claiming he was infringing on the GPL.

So, what's the use in them being open-source if the only people that can look at it are people who write code for Linux ( the only major GPL kernel out there )

Re:Tell that to Lexmark

[debatem1]

That is uncomfortably close to the conversation I had with them- except instead of pointing out the price, I pointed out the giant "GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE" sign outside their front window and declined.