this post was submitted on 17 Apr 2024
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Former Nouveau Lead Developer Joins NVIDIA, Continues Working On Open-Source Driver (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

So, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

I'm not sure what is more surprising that he is at the green giant or that he's able to continue working on the Nouveau driver in an official capacity. Ben Skeggs has been involved with the Nouveau project for more than a decade.

I don't trust them, there has to be a catch.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 7 months ago (2 children)

The solution is simple.

Fork the code and maintain your own fork.

.. or ..

You could say thank you and enjoy the fact that a person is being paid to write and maintain open source software.

If it all goes to shit, you can still fork the code.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That really depends on if NVIDIA pulls some nonsense and makes the driver somehow worse.

I'm hopeful, just a bit skeptical due to the decisions they've made in the past.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

...and makes the driver somehow worse.

Just revert the commit history.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago

Yeah, I'll get right on that and resolve conflicts and maintain my own driver...

I honestly just gave up on NVIDIA and bought AMD. If this ends up working out well, I'll consider NVIDIA the next time I need a GPU, but the GBM nonsense drove me away.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Are you sure you replied to the correct comment?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Nvidia has been slowly trying to open a little over the years; first GBM support in the proprietary driver then the open OOT module and finally GSP firmwares for the kernel; allowing an OSS kernel module to exist.

The OSS graphics community has obviously shown that it doesn't want Nvidia's open module (which is tied to the proprietary driver anyways) and would rather build out its own OSS drivers atop an adapted Nouveau/NOVA. Perhaps Nvidia finally realised this?

I'm sceptical too but for now this appears to be an actually good move from Nvidia?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Hopefully? I'm optimistic, but skeptical. I hope the dev gets actual information about the product that they can legally use to improve FOSS NVIDIA drivers.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah, that has been the largest pain point for all these years I heard.