Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

NVIDIA Begins Providing Open-Source 3D Driver Support For GeForce GTX 900 Series (phoronix.com)

Posted by timothy on from the sign-this-line-to-acknowledge-delivery dept.

An anonymous reader writes: In late 2014 NVIDIA announced their GPUs would begin requiring signed firmware images before the open-source driver could enable hardware acceleration. That led the Nouveau developers to call the latest GPUs "very open-source unfriendly", but that criticism can now be laid to rest as NVIDIA has finally released the signed firmware and basic open-source driver code. The open-source driver can now move on with its open-source 3D enablement for Maxwell GPUs and the NVIDIA developer is hoping it will be ready for the next kernel cycle (Linux 4.6).

3 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. Re:still a binary blob then? by JackieBrown · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I hate what you wrote because I love open-source but I have seen all these complaints before.

    Company doesn't open source and they are the devil
    Company partially open sources and they are the devil for not opening it all
    Company completely open sources and then we hear that they are just trying to get free labor and they are still the devil.

  2. Re:still a binary blob then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    THERE ISN'T ANY CARD THAT DOESN'T HAVE PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY IN IT THAT THEY DON'T WANT TO JUST GIVE AWAY TO THE WORLD?

    Um, apart from AMD GCN which has proprietary technology in it and yet they still document the card's registers and ISA.

    In fact, Intel manage this on their processors, which is a way more competitive and secret world than GPUs.

    The reason nVidia hide shit is because their shit smells bad and they don't want that to get out. It has nothing to do with "secret sauce".

    Documenting your products' external interfaces properly isn't the same as giving away your "secrets". All it does is show how shitty your external interfaces are.

    CAPTCHA: imbecile

  3. Personally, I don't care. by 0100010001010011 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For me FOSS is a tool, it's not something to get emotional or tied up about. I pay Nvidia money Nvidia pays people to develop drivers that work. I paid AMD/ATI money and they said "Ha, here's a shit ton of specs, write them yourself". Sorry. My job isn't to write display drivers, my job is to use the display drivers.

    I suppose I could try growing my own food too, but I (gladly) pay someone else to do it for me. Even if it is a bit 'closed source'.