video cards

[Luke -Jr]

On Thursday 03 April 2008, Bradley Hook wrote:
> nVidia is only *technically* breaking the GPL with their pre-built
> kernel modules that there installer can download from their servers.

Again, the GPL applies to source releases just as much as binary releases.
Whether they distribute binary or source, they still need to abide by the law.

That is, even if they don't include pre-built modules, they are still 
distributing the source for that module without abiding by the GPL terms.

> This would piss a lot of people off, but they wouldn't be looking at nVidia,
> they'd be after the lawyer to stirred up the trouble.

And that's exactly why all the copyright holders are afraid of suing nVidia.

> nVidia has been very nice to the Open Source community. Someone doesn't
> have to subscribe to our development model and license schemes to be our
> friend. While it is true that it would be nice to have nVidia on the
> Open Source band wagon, there is no reason to go on rants about how
> "bad" they are.

A proprietary driver is useless.
It would be better to have nothing for nVidia than their blobs.
At least then there would be enough interest in the community to either put 
them out of business or create reverse engineered support.