Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?

Paul Jakma
2003-01-02T02:49:26Z

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003, Bill Huey wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 02, 2003 at 12:31:13AM +0000, Paul Jakma wrote:

> > subsystem, the VFS, etc.. These systems are rather large bodies of
> > code - without which the NVidia kernel driver could not work.
>
> Well, no, look at the "nm" dump of the object file. It's got a lot of
> proprietary code

indeed. that doesnt change the fact that this large body of NVidia
specific code still must make use of large parts of linux code
(through function calls).

> It's a very practical solution to do it this way.

yes, but the legalities of it are rather grey.

> > How are the standard interfaces not covered by the GPL?
>
> All I saw where kernel header files include in the sources, nothing
> more.

indeed, and if that were the only issue it would be clear there is no
issue. however, it must make use of linux code at runtime through
function calls - as linux makes use of the NVidia proprietary code by
calling the functions it provides.

> I'd rather have the experts do it at NVidia, than a half completed
> open source implementation that isn't terribly optimized.

I run systems that use many GPL and fully open drivers that are quite
well optimised. Some of these drivers were written by the vendor's
"experts" and are distributed seperately - still GPL though.
Sometimes one has a choice between drivers written by the vendor and
drivers written by (non-expert???) "community" authors, and often one
finds the vendor driver is the one that isn't terribly optimised.

> Matrix multiplies, T&L, etc...

none of this stuff is done in kernel (least it shouldnt be). Its done
in user-space libraries.

The XFree licence allows binary only modules, indeed XFree 4 was
designed to make distribution of (possibly binary) modules as easy as
possible.

There isnt that much magic the NVidia kernel modules ought to be
doing really.

> communication between user and kernel space that provides this to
> the OpenGL libraries are all exotic. I'm glad that nobody has to
> deal with this stuff directly and that a vendor is willing to
> provide support for it.

aha.. yes, all that complicated hardware stuff - you dont really want
those linux kernel amatuers writing that.

> bill

regards,
--
Paul Jakma paul@clubi.ie paul@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A
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