NVIDIA Begins Releasing Documentation For Nouveau

sl4shd0rk writes "Nvidia, perhaps inspired by the infamous Torvalds Salute, has decided to do something about its crummy image with Open Source developers. The company has begun to release public documentation on certain aspects of its GPUs. Reactions from developers have been mixed; much of what's already been released wasn't a big mystery, but Nvidia says more is coming and they will also provide guidance in needed areas as well. Linus said, 'I'm cautiously optimistic that this is a real shift in how Nvidia perceives Linux. The actual docs released so far are fairly limited, and in themselves they wouldn't be a big thing, but if Nvidia really does follow up and start opening up more, that would certainly be great. They've already been much better in the ARM SoC space than they were on the more traditional GPU side, and I really hope that some day I can just apologize for ever giving them the finger.'"

Comments

Valve/Steam

[intermodal]

Anyone else think this is a result of Valve's announcement of focus on Linux-based Steam?

Re:Valve/Steam

[digsbo]

That was my first thought as well, though I cynically suspect this new openness from NVidia suggests the Steam box will be AMD based, and NVidia is trying to control damage with this move.

Re:Valve/Steam

[luciano.moretti]

That was exactly my thought.

Valve is making a big push into the Linux game space, and is likely putting some pressure on partners to "play nice" with Linux. While Valve isn't likely big enough to cause a complete reversal on their own, I'm guessing that Valve + Shield + success with releasing mobile specs + other internal pressures is causing them to reevaluate their stance in regard to desktop graphics accelerators.

Re:Valve/Steam

[intermodal]

They like to keep this stuff locked up tighter than a hooker's snatch.

I'm not so sure that analogy means what you think it means.

I have it on good authority that their board of directors mandated this release to prevent fiduciary duty lawsuits.

Nothing like putting the douche in fiduciary, eh?

Re:Valve/Steam

[ifiwereasculptor]

Not really. I think it was a response to the increased fragmentation of display servers. They'd have to support X and Mir and Wayland with their drivers. It's easier to just provide documentation and let the open source drivers do most of the heavy-lifting. Also, AMD's open support has been met with a lot of praise lately, due to DPM being available for the open drivers. Thinking more long-term, the Wintel platform is starting to give signs of decline, so it doesn't hurt NVIDIA to hedge their bets - and the most economical way of doing that is by releasing specs.

Re:Valve/Steam

[MBGMorden]

SteamOS means millions of new users

Potentially, sure.

that care about open source software

You're incredibly naive if you believe that bit.

Re:Valve/Steam

[exomondo]

Point was that the discrete graphics card market is dead

Why is it that some people see a decline in a market and translate that to it being 'dead'? I suppose desktops and laptops are dead too? We might as well just ditch them and shift to....what?

it is a shrinking small sector and there is not even room for one player!

Really? In this multi-billion dollar a year industry there is not even room for one player? Why are they even bothering to make them then? If there's not even room for one player then the fact that there are 2 must be catastrophic to their bottom lines, they must be losing money hand over fist just supporting that market!

Re:Valve/Steam

[Jesus_666]

Let's face it: Gaming is dead. PC gaming is dead because of consoles. Console gaming is dead because of smartphones. iOS is dead because of Android and Android is dead because of fragmentation. Physical games are dead because of video games.

We are most likely the last generation that engages in unproductive activities for fun. Yes, even those of us who aren't part of "this generation". Especially them, in fact.

Re:Linus Torvalds

[Ynot_82]

Torvald's comments to Nvidia were to do with Optimus (their GPU switching stuff), not their closed graphics driver

Apologize? No.

[fahrbot-bot]

I really hope that some day I can just apologize for ever giving them the finger.

There's no need to apologize later Linus. They behaved badly and you called them out on it. If they change their behavior for the better, simply praise them for that then.

Re:where are these tight ones?

[Oysterville]

The sensitive women are who you are looking for, for what should be apparent reasons.

Re:Linus Torvalds

[blackiner]

Sort of. The userspace interface is the ABI that linux keeps constant. Basically all the syscalls, ioctls, and Linus even likes to include the nuances of how they operate as part of the ABI. This is the stuff that must not change, and it does a pretty good job at keeping it constant. Supposedly apps compiled to target the 1.0 kernel can still run just fine on the latest kernel, provided the libraries it links to also maintained good ABI stability.

The ABI breakage that occurs happens with in kernel functions themselves. These are things that are not considered standardized API functions or syscalls that should be accessed by userspace. But, in order to produce closed source drivers for Linux, companies like NVIDIA will need to link to these functions. Linking to these is of course a violation of the GPL, though, so NVIDIA gets around it by writing an open source shim that gets compiled when the driver is installed, which then connects to their more proprietary parts. One of the points of the GPL and allowed in kernel ABI breakage is to make it more difficult for people to keep their drivers closed source and outside the kernel.

Re:Apologize? Yes.

[sjames]

Acting 12 is pretty good in a world of corporations yelling MINE MINE MINE while squabbling like 2 year olds.