Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2006 21:53:39 +0200 From: Miguel Mendez <mmendez@energyhq.be> To: Michal Mertl <mime@traveller.cz> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, czander@nvidia.com Subject: Re: NVIDIA FreeBSD kernel feature requests Message-ID: <20060706215339.36c52f2e.mmendez@energyhq.be> In-Reply-To: <1151877095.1085.19.camel@genius.i.cz> References: <20060629111231.GA692@wolf.nvidia.com> <20060702114950.bf39e312.mmendez@energyhq.be> <1151877095.1085.19.camel@genius.i.cz>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
--Signature=_Thu__6_Jul_2006_21_53_39_+0200_xZx3vuvin8BDKqjq Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Sun, 02 Jul 2006 23:51:35 +0200 Michal Mertl <mime@traveller.cz> wrote: Hi, I'm going to reply to this, once, just to make my argument clear. > I think that this reaction wasn't called for. Modern GPUs are > extraordinarily complex HW and to write a decent driver will take > appropriate effort. I understand that open source "infected" people > (like me) prefer having the detailed HW documentation but we shouldn't > refuse the vendor's efforts to provide good driver to us. I agree modern GPUs are way more complex than the C64 VIC. However I never asked for the source code of the driver. I ran one earlier version through Siul+hacky's dasm and, believe me, you don't want that code. NVidia's reason for not releasing the source code of their proprietary OpenGL driver is that it contains licensed 3rd party code. Let's buy that for a second. That still doesn't explain why the nforce chipsets are undocumented. And that doesn't explain why there isn't any register documentation for earlier GPUs. I mean, for Christ's sake, if you're on a 6 month release cycle, who honestly cares about a card that was released 2 years ago? But still no documentation. You might be familiar with this quote: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". In these days many freenix users happily give up their freedom in order to gain functinality. It's funny when you think about it, NVidia started when some engineers left SGI. SGI has contributed a lot to the free software community, e.g. XFS, while NVidia doesn't seem to care at all. Considering that they're a _hardware_ company I find it amusing that they refuse to help people do work for them for free. > I haven't understood much of Mr. Zander's questions but I am pretty sure > some readers did and probably have been talking to him off-list. I also > tend to believe that his requests for features were based on good > understanding of FreeBSD kernel internals (better that mine and probably > also yours) and if we add the features or help him effectively use > what's there everyone will benefit. And as I see it, NVidia is asking FreeBSD developers to invest man hours, for free, so they can release a _proprietary_ driver for FreeBSD which you can neither use on !x86/amd64 nor study. Sounds like a very nice deal. I know many among the BSD camp consider people like Richard Stallman and Theo to be extremists when it comes to software freedom. Maybe you'll change your mind next time you're trying to use NVidia hardware on a macppc box. Cheers. --=20 Miguel Mendez <mmendez@energyhq.be>=20 http://www.energyhq.be PGP Key: 0xDC8514F1 --Signature=_Thu__6_Jul_2006_21_53_39_+0200_xZx3vuvin8BDKqjq Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (FreeBSD) iD8DBQFErWpGnLctrNyFFPERAvz3AJ9iRLli3ezQqZh7Fpv/jeC14NjLhgCbBasz eC7UA50CUs141C07aj+P5rM= =tJyR -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Signature=_Thu__6_Jul_2006_21_53_39_+0200_xZx3vuvin8BDKqjq--
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20060706215339.36c52f2e.mmendez>