Subject: Re: Asking for NVIDIA drivers
To: None <netbsd-advocacy@netbsd.org>
From: Steve <mrdomino@gmail.com>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 06/22/2005 15:28:56
Begging pardon, but I'm currently under the impression that the NetBSD
developers would mind quite a bit working under an NDA. Unless you've
consulted them yourself about this, I don't think it's quite a good
idea to put words like that in their mouths.

Personally, I think that it's far more important for nVidia and other
manufacturers to just release complete documentation---including
errata---for their products; this is a simple thing to do and doesn't
compromise any of their internal designs. It's
impractical-to-impossible for a closed driver to be truly portable,
especially for any reasonable amount of time, and using them
introduces a whole host of problems. The last thing we need is for
manufacturers like nVidia to get the impression that supplying closed
interfaces as stand-ins for real documentation is an acceptable
practice.

The general sentiment of the open-source community has for quite some
time been that we don't expect manufacturers to write drivers for
us---that we'll take care of them if they just describe how to
interface with their products. You shouldn't be lobbying for nVidia to
write drivers, even with the assistance of existing developers; that
reinforces the misconception that if there are to be drivers written,
they have to be the ones to write them.

If you want to campaign for something, then demand that nVidia release
specifications for using their cards. Unless they've really fudged
their interface design, that will be no skin off their backs and won't
endanger any of their intellectual property, and will benefit the
operating system world infinitely more than any closed interface, even
one designed with portability in mind.

Just my $0.02; IANA driver developer. I'm just expressing the
sentiments I've heard from them commonly.