On Wed, Jun 27, 2007 at 06:09:28AM +0800, Ed Greshko wrote: > Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak wrote: > Some folks complain that nVidia drivers should not be used since they are > "closed source" and that is somehow "bad". Yet, the drivers are free and > when you encounter problems you can report them to the vendor. > > Yet, there is another product from another company that is also "closed > source" is also free and albeit performs a different function nobody seems > to complain about it. I'm talking about VMware Server. > > Can someone if me a rational/logical reason for this? You're comparing apples to oranges. On one hand, you have people complaining that a vendor refuses to give full documentation for a piece of hardware the user bought and wants to use. On the other hand, you have a piece of software that isn't needed for the system to work at it fullest potencial. You won't have people complaining that VMware Server isn't OSS. They can use qemu, bochs, xen, whatever. The drive images format is relatively known, so you can use them with some of the other systems. I won't complain about vmware not being OSS. I'm not locked to it. I do complain that the Nvidia binary is a blob. It had a security problem some time ago and I had to wait for the vendor to issue a proper fix, and I can't use 3d acceleration in one of my systems (PPC). I'm not even complaining that nvidia doesn't release the drivers as OSS (though it would be nice), but I will keep complaining about releasing proper, unencumbered documentation about the hardware. The Nouveau project is trying to document and implement a 3d driver, see http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FAQ. But the last time I tried the graphics card entered an invalid state just after entering my username in gdm. -- lfr 0/0
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