Actually, I don't think it is real time:) But yes, I get the point. It is revolutionary, I'm not saying it isn't, but they have to be careful not to get into a graphics tail chase.
I care very much about that, actually. And I don't think I've said anything from which you could reasonably infer otherwise. Sorry, I'll try to keep better track of who I'm replying to.
I almost agree with you. Show me a good shot at Nvidia and I'll take it. Are you in a position to do that?
But suing them for what they're doing now would, I think, be extremely expensive first off. Because, unlike the cases that have been prosecuted so far, this is not a clear, undeniable violation. Ok, first off, this is the case the FSF has to have. They need to prosecute this and they need to win. Cause if what they are doing is legal, then the GPL is broken a lot more than we thought.
Secondly, I don't think it is all that complicated. Even if you wanna debate the whole derived work and not distributing linux thing, some people are distributing linux and this module. Surely we can agree that they are violating the GPL. If we can agree on that, then getting NVIDIA is easy. It's contributory copyright infringement. They're facilitating.
Gotta disagree. If that were the case I'm sure we'd see a lot more proprietary extensions to GPL programs. Just because they distribute source, does not mean it is free software.
I think it is perfectly reasonably to describe someone who is ignoring aspects of freedom and focusing on aspects of utility as apolitical. Freedom is a political issue. One could say it is the political issue. There's no argument that proprietary software restricts your freedom.. that's what copyright and licenses are all about, restrictions. What's your argument here?
NVIDIA makes these drivers for embedded software developers. The fact that you and I can use it to play games is of little concern to them. They want into the embedded Linux market. They see the desktop as a wasteland. Especially the home desktop.
The shim is not under the GPL, it's under this license. Which permits nothing but redistribution in distros, with optional modification to the wrapper (or shim) but not the binary.
but they obey their obligations on the shim. Ok, I'm gunna have to stop you right there. They don't obey their obligations on the shim. Specifically the shim (which I call, the wrapper) is not under the GPL, and the GPL clearly states that You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License. Game Over.
The binary blob, as you call it, specifically, nv-kernel.o or "the resource manager" as the wrapper calls it, is a derivative work of the wrapper, and is therefore also required to be under the GPL, and so on. This is classic "how do I make proprietary modifications to a GPL program?" nonsense. Anyone who distributes this stuff is guilty of contributory copyright infringement. There's your legal reason not to distribute it. Even without such, Ubuntu should not include this stuff, because it takes away your freedom. You might not care about that, but that's what the principles of Ubuntu are all about not doing so they certainly should.
Yes, compliance is much better than punishment. Of course, in the case of NVIDIA, who have just shown outright contempt for the GPL, I'd be willing to bend that ideal and recommend that kernel developers sue for damages.
Actually, Bruce is very much on the side of Free Software over Open Source and, he says, always has been. To him, Open Source was just a good "Introduction to Free Software for Business Majors" philosophy. Once they know the basics, you move em on to talking about freedom.
In regards to proprietary graphics drivers. They are proprietary because we tolerate them. If the day NVIDIA had released those drivers the kernel developers had asked the FSF to send a cease and desist to NVIDIA, we probably would have full open source 3d accelerated drivers the very next day. If the FSF had copyright in the kernel (and I can only imagine they don't because of Linus) this would have happened. Instead, we have kernel contributors who place their code under the GPL and then don't enforce it. Might as well just make it BSD licensed.
As for patents. There is no question. No-one even looks at Microsoft's patents before they make these wild claims that GNU/Linux doesn't infringe on any of them. Write more than a couple of thousand lines of code and you're almost certainly violating someone's patent, why not Microsoft's?
As for this: you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. No I don't. I can try to convince you. Or you can try to convince me. And in agreement we might find something even better: truth.
He has the right to be apolitical, and I have the right tell him he's a fool. How's that saying go again? The problem with ignoring politics is that you end up being ruled by such idiots?
They don't sue Ubuntu because those guys are clearly NOT trying to circumvent the spirit of the license.
Excuse me? They're taking stuff that the relevant kernel developers have clearly said is illegal, unworkable and unethical and they're distributing it. They should be shunning these drivers, not proping them up.
And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it.
The only reason they're getting away with it is because the relevant kernel developers are not suing them.
What I do expect will happen, at some point, is someone with standing to sue will initiate a dialogue with them, and they'll remove the drivers.
I dont think that's going to happen. I think we're going to learn to live with it. Then the next time some hardware company sees an advantage in making a closed source driver for Linux, they'll point at the NVIDIA drivers and say "well, they're ok, so we'll be ok." And ya know what? They will be. Then everything will fall apart.
If you don't care about your freedom, you'll lose it.
I'd love to do something about this. I have some ideas about what I could do about this. Maybe some people would like to help me, but the people who are in the best position to do something about this are Greg Kroah-Hartman, Martin Mares, avid Mosberger-Tang, Frederic Potter and Drew Eckhardt. They wrote the code that NVIDIA is illegally linking to. They put that code under the GPL. Was there a point to that?
since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement there it is again. Bruce! we need you again. As for not a "proprietary vs. free software issue", way to miss the point. I wish you, Linus Torvalds and Wernher von Braun could go have a beer together.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal. Closed source Linux kernel modules are unworkable. Closed source Linux kernel modules are unethical.
So who the hell is this guy? He's Greg Kroah-Hartman. Who the hell is that? He's a kernel developer. His name appears 149 times in my kernel sources (Ubuntu patched, 2.6.15). And, perhaps more tellingly it appears at the top of the files:
drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c and
drivers/pci/search.c
both of which contain many functions which are called from functions in this file:
What's that? It's wrapper for the closed source NVIDIA kernel module. What license is that under? The NVIDIA Software License. It's basically a proprietary EULA with a redistribution (without modification) exception for distros. It sure aint the GPL, or "as free" as the GPL (which is techically what the GPL requires for derived works).
So Greg.. why don't you sue them? You've made your position clear, fight them. If you havn't got the money, contact the FSF, assign your copyright to them, get them to fight. Given the choice between opening their source code or not being able to distribute their software at all, NVIDIA will choose to open their source code. How can I be so sure? Cause people buy their chipsets to integrate into things like set top boxes and other devices that run Linux. They need that embedded market, that's why they released the drivers in the first place. The problem is that no-one is making them choose.
Interesting you say that. Most people, this is how they see business. To get more market share you've gotta crush the other guy right? There's a fixed number of customers out there and they are only going to buy one company's product, so it better be ours! Thing is, not everyone thinks like that. Our friends over at Sun ("the biggest contributor to Free Software" - RMS) hold the opinion that the way to increase your market share is to grow the market. i.e., get more customers into that market by offering products and services that previously were not available in that market. I think it's an enlightened philosophy. When your competitors don't have to lose so that you may win, then the customer is the ultimate winner. Take notes Microsoft.
No, they havn't promised not to sue Novell, they have promised not to sue Novell's customers. That said, yes, before the deal they could have sued anyone, and after the deal they can't sue certain people but can sue everyone else.. so what? Nothing has changed? Well yeah, except that no-one actually believed Microsoft could sue anyone but now a couple of million dollars on the table says Novell's lawyers think they can (otherwise it's just a bit circlejerk, and hey, that's likely too).
Nah, this deal affects all of us. It basically says Microsoft is going to start suing users of Linux (except Novell's customers). Not that they are, but it makes people who care about this stuff nervous. As for Ubuntu, well, they could be in for some new and different pain soon. They're putting proprietary video card drivers into the default install of the distro. That's clearly illegal. Kernel developers could sue them. Not that they will either, cause they're pussies. You shouldn't want to run that stuff anyways. If you wanna run proprietary software, go run Windows, or buy a Mac.
I've seen good managers in tech manager positions as well, but they seem to be rather rare.
That's cause they are flukes. We make so much money in IT, with margins so large that we can get away with this stuff. Where else do you see bad managers? Law firms. Energy brokers. Yes. People I know are managers in other industries, they actually know what they're doing. They actually know how their decisions affected the company's bottom line.
Yeah, that is "understood" by people who's entire experience in the game industry is listening to a couple of speeches by Will Wright. To the actual programmers in the game industry it is "understood" to mean any generation of content by an algorithm.
Yep, so I've got 3ds max open here and I'm using the footstep system to make walking animations. My friend over here has Maya open, he's using the bi-ped creation tool. Perhaps you should upgrade your toolchain. Sheesh.
No, groupthink is when they moderate me down because they think you are right. Moderation isn't supposed to be about who is right and who is wrong.. it's supposed to be about who contributes to the conversation and who doesn't. Anyways, that's not what procedurally generated content means.
Talk about groupthink. Most all that "static, pre-made content" is made with procedural content generation tools. You think someone sat down and designed that tree? You think someone manually made that walk animation? All those bi-peds we see, they were made polygon by polygon were they? No. The industry has already moved onto procedural generated content.
Just about every studio uses procedurally generated trees for outdoor scenes. Nearly no-one actually designs bi-peds anymore, as there is human creators in the major 3d modelling tools now. All that eye candy in Oblivion was procedurally generated. Walking animations have been procedurally generated for a very long time now.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I don't think it is real time :) But yes, I get the point. It is revolutionary, I'm not saying it isn't, but they have to be careful not to get into a graphics tail chase.
Secondly, I don't think it is all that complicated. Even if you wanna debate the whole derived work and not distributing linux thing, some people are distributing linux and this module. Surely we can agree that they are violating the GPL. If we can agree on that, then getting NVIDIA is easy. It's contributory copyright infringement. They're facilitating.
Gotta disagree. If that were the case I'm sure we'd see a lot more proprietary extensions to GPL programs. Just because they distribute source, does not mean it is free software.
I think it is perfectly reasonably to describe someone who is ignoring aspects of freedom and focusing on aspects of utility as apolitical. Freedom is a political issue. One could say it is the political issue. There's no argument that proprietary software restricts your freedom.. that's what copyright and licenses are all about, restrictions. What's your argument here?
NVIDIA makes these drivers for embedded software developers. The fact that you and I can use it to play games is of little concern to them. They want into the embedded Linux market. They see the desktop as a wasteland. Especially the home desktop.
The shim is not under the GPL, it's under this license. Which permits nothing but redistribution in distros, with optional modification to the wrapper (or shim) but not the binary.
The binary blob, as you call it, specifically, nv-kernel.o or "the resource manager" as the wrapper calls it, is a derivative work of the wrapper, and is therefore also required to be under the GPL, and so on. This is classic "how do I make proprietary modifications to a GPL program?" nonsense. Anyone who distributes this stuff is guilty of contributory copyright infringement. There's your legal reason not to distribute it. Even without such, Ubuntu should not include this stuff, because it takes away your freedom. You might not care about that, but that's what the principles of Ubuntu are all about not doing so they certainly should.
Yes, compliance is much better than punishment. Of course, in the case of NVIDIA, who have just shown outright contempt for the GPL, I'd be willing to bend that ideal and recommend that kernel developers sue for damages.
Tis very interesting that. Once again mentions Greg Koah-Hartman's talk. I just think it's a shame he didn't post the email.
Actually, Bruce is very much on the side of Free Software over Open Source and, he says, always has been. To him, Open Source was just a good "Introduction to Free Software for Business Majors" philosophy. Once they know the basics, you move em on to talking about freedom.
In regards to proprietary graphics drivers. They are proprietary because we tolerate them. If the day NVIDIA had released those drivers the kernel developers had asked the FSF to send a cease and desist to NVIDIA, we probably would have full open source 3d accelerated drivers the very next day. If the FSF had copyright in the kernel (and I can only imagine they don't because of Linus) this would have happened. Instead, we have kernel contributors who place their code under the GPL and then don't enforce it. Might as well just make it BSD licensed.
As for patents. There is no question. No-one even looks at Microsoft's patents before they make these wild claims that GNU/Linux doesn't infringe on any of them. Write more than a couple of thousand lines of code and you're almost certainly violating someone's patent, why not Microsoft's?
As for this: you have to accept we do not all agree with you all the time. No I don't. I can try to convince you. Or you can try to convince me. And in agreement we might find something even better: truth.
He has the right to be apolitical, and I have the right tell him he's a fool. How's that saying go again? The problem with ignoring politics is that you end up being ruled by such idiots?
They don't sue Ubuntu because those guys are clearly NOT trying to circumvent the spirit of the license.
Excuse me? They're taking stuff that the relevant kernel developers have clearly said is illegal, unworkable and unethical and they're distributing it. They should be shunning these drivers, not proping them up.
And as long as they aren't actually distributing code, they can get away with it.
The only reason they're getting away with it is because the relevant kernel developers are not suing them.
What I do expect will happen, at some point, is someone with standing to sue will initiate a dialogue with them, and they'll remove the drivers.
I dont think that's going to happen. I think we're going to learn to live with it. Then the next time some hardware company sees an advantage in making a closed source driver for Linux, they'll point at the NVIDIA drivers and say "well, they're ok, so we'll be ok." And ya know what? They will be. Then everything will fall apart.
If you don't care about your freedom, you'll lose it.
I'd love to do something about this. I have some ideas about what I could do about this. Maybe some people would like to help me, but the people who are in the best position to do something about this are Greg Kroah-Hartman, Martin Mares, avid Mosberger-Tang, Frederic Potter and Drew Eckhardt. They wrote the code that NVIDIA is illegally linking to. They put that code under the GPL. Was there a point to that?
since we're all pretty sure that there isn't any infringement there it is again. Bruce! we need you again. As for not a "proprietary vs. free software issue", way to miss the point. I wish you, Linus Torvalds and Wernher von Braun could go have a beer together.
I was actually hoping they'd take notes because it is what is best for the customer. Guess you missed that bit.
Linux supports more devices "out of the box" than any other operating system ever has. Yes, even FreeBSD.
r face.c
The other key highlight of this talk was:
Closed source Linux kernel modules are illegal.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unworkable.
Closed source Linux kernel modules are unethical.
So who the hell is this guy? He's Greg Kroah-Hartman. Who the hell is that? He's a kernel developer. His name appears 149 times in my kernel sources (Ubuntu patched, 2.6.15). And, perhaps more tellingly it appears at the top of the files:
drivers/pci/pci-sysfs.c and
drivers/pci/search.c
both of which contain many functions which are called from functions in this file:
NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8776-pkg1/usr/src/nv/os-inte
What's that? It's wrapper for the closed source NVIDIA kernel module. What license is that under? The NVIDIA Software License. It's basically a proprietary EULA with a redistribution (without modification) exception for distros. It sure aint the GPL, or "as free" as the GPL (which is techically what the GPL requires for derived works).
So Greg.. why don't you sue them? You've made your position clear, fight them. If you havn't got the money, contact the FSF, assign your copyright to them, get them to fight. Given the choice between opening their source code or not being able to distribute their software at all, NVIDIA will choose to open their source code. How can I be so sure? Cause people buy their chipsets to integrate into things like set top boxes and other devices that run Linux. They need that embedded market, that's why they released the drivers in the first place. The problem is that no-one is making them choose.
Interesting you say that. Most people, this is how they see business. To get more market share you've gotta crush the other guy right? There's a fixed number of customers out there and they are only going to buy one company's product, so it better be ours! Thing is, not everyone thinks like that. Our friends over at Sun ("the biggest contributor to Free Software" - RMS) hold the opinion that the way to increase your market share is to grow the market. i.e., get more customers into that market by offering products and services that previously were not available in that market. I think it's an enlightened philosophy. When your competitors don't have to lose so that you may win, then the customer is the ultimate winner. Take notes Microsoft.
No, they havn't promised not to sue Novell, they have promised not to sue Novell's customers. That said, yes, before the deal they could have sued anyone, and after the deal they can't sue certain people but can sue everyone else.. so what? Nothing has changed? Well yeah, except that no-one actually believed Microsoft could sue anyone but now a couple of million dollars on the table says Novell's lawyers think they can (otherwise it's just a bit circlejerk, and hey, that's likely too).
Nah, this deal affects all of us. It basically says Microsoft is going to start suing users of Linux (except Novell's customers). Not that they are, but it makes people who care about this stuff nervous. As for Ubuntu, well, they could be in for some new and different pain soon. They're putting proprietary video card drivers into the default install of the distro. That's clearly illegal. Kernel developers could sue them. Not that they will either, cause they're pussies. You shouldn't want to run that stuff anyways. If you wanna run proprietary software, go run Windows, or buy a Mac.
I've seen good managers in tech manager positions as well, but they seem to be rather rare.
That's cause they are flukes. We make so much money in IT, with margins so large that we can get away with this stuff. Where else do you see bad managers? Law firms. Energy brokers. Yes. People I know are managers in other industries, they actually know what they're doing. They actually know how their decisions affected the company's bottom line.
Yeah, that is "understood" by people who's entire experience in the game industry is listening to a couple of speeches by Will Wright. To the actual programmers in the game industry it is "understood" to mean any generation of content by an algorithm.
Yes, but it is what "procedural content" means. It means someone didn't sit there and draw it, an algorithm did.
Yep, so I've got 3ds max open here and I'm using the footstep system to make walking animations. My friend over here has Maya open, he's using the bi-ped creation tool. Perhaps you should upgrade your toolchain. Sheesh.
No, groupthink is when they moderate me down because they think you are right. Moderation isn't supposed to be about who is right and who is wrong.. it's supposed to be about who contributes to the conversation and who doesn't. Anyways, that's not what procedurally generated content means.
Yep, and you only have to install a proprietary graphics card driver to make it that pretty. No thanks.
Talk about groupthink. Most all that "static, pre-made content" is made with procedural content generation tools. You think someone sat down and designed that tree? You think someone manually made that walk animation? All those bi-peds we see, they were made polygon by polygon were they? No. The industry has already moved onto procedural generated content.
Just about every studio uses procedurally generated trees for outdoor scenes. Nearly no-one actually designs bi-peds anymore, as there is human creators in the major 3d modelling tools now. All that eye candy in Oblivion was procedurally generated. Walking animations have been procedurally generated for a very long time now.