Re: [MLUG] nvidia tnt2 agp, geForce IV 4200 AGP 128 MB cards under Linux?

[Mark Haidekker <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Whoa. I was tricked into believing that a ".src.tar.gz" contains sources. I 
never - as you can imagine - actually downloaded that file. I have to fully 
(but reluctantly) agree with you - nvidia is not even open source with 
lower-case letters. Damn.

Thanks,
Mark



On Wednesday 07 August 2002 09:54 am, you wrote:
> download the source tarball for the glx driver.  untar it.  there is no
> source (*.c, *.S, etc.) in there, save the header files needed to
> compile against the opengl libraries.  the source to the actual
> driver(s) is not available anywhere, not under any license.  nvidia
> won't even talk to you about any specs other than 2d for their cards.
> it's a smart move on their part, as the driver source would contain low
> level card access that could give away some of their i.p.  this could
> make it possible for any joe schmoe with a fab plant to copy their
> chips.  not that this would happen, but it could...  again, the hooks
> into the kernel api (the NVdriver.o module) have source available, but
> are not necessarily open source.  the drivers that access these hooks
> are completely proprietary, closed source product.
>
> if you're concerned about being completely "open source," you should
> stay away from nvidia cards.  when you install the kernel module from
> the command line, it will actually give a message about "polluting the
> kernel" with non-gpl code.  if you want a decent card that does 2d and
> 3d under linux, and you require an open source dev model, the only way
> to go right now is with one of the older radeon cards.  ati's newer
> cards are using a driver architecture similar to nvidia.
>
>      ryan woodsmall
>         EMAIL:PROTECTED
>
> > I checked. You need to load two parts, the kernel module and
> > the GLX driver.
> > Both are available as source tarballs. Maybe it's not Open
> > Source (the GPL
> > way), but I'd call this open source.
> >
> > Mark
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