this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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But why is it a problem if they call on parts of the kernal they shouldn't? is it just a privacy concern, does it also impact performance? i don't understand
Cause the GPL is a virus
We'll be down voted, but agreed.
And it's a good thing. Fuck proprietary software 😎
As the commenter stated, it is a copyright issue. Nvidia is not allowed to use this code in a proprietary driver.
Wouldn't that automatically make their code GPL?
No it would just make Nvidia guilty of copyright infringement
If they want to use that code legally they should make their code GPL but i doubt there proprietary code gets automatically overrules. I wish it did.
I do wonder what would happen if someone would hack and leak Nvidia’s code under the defense that they thought Nvidia to be operating legally therefor assuming there code is GPL, I presume Nvidia would need to officially confess their crime as a legal defense that they never ment to open source their own code.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. Vs Cisco Systems Inc. disagrees. The FSF sued Linksys for violating the license for GCC, libc etc.
And they were forced in court to release all their WRT stuff under GPL, which is how OpenWRT got its start.
Just the idea of nvidia being forced to open source there drivers makes me drool in sweet winners justice.
But realistically, Nvidia feels like one of the more powerful corporations around do we stand a chance? I do hope FSF tries regardless.
Linksys was part of Cisco. They had veryy deep pockets, but the FSF & SFC prevailed regardless.
I doubt the FSF or SFC will go after Nvidia, this has been a long standing issue and I haven't heard about any lawsuits being brought because of it, even before Nvidia had more money than God.
I don't see how the copyright mechanism works here. The GPL has rules about linking to GPL code, enforced by the notion that the linked binary is a protected derivative work. Going and finding out where in memory some functions are and jumping to them is not going to create a derivative work.
The Linux devs just have a rule about who they want to call these symbols and are trying to enforce it themselves.
You not seeing how this violates the copyright does not mean you are correct
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.en.html
Which they technically didn't. I'm sure Nvidia has a legal team that vetted their solution, they certainly have the money for it. At this point the "protection" against the proprietary driver is just anti-consumer.