Linus Torvalds Gives 'Thumbs Up' To Nvidia For Nouveau Contributions

sfcrazy writes "Linus Torvalds has had some harsh words for Nvidia in the past. Their failure to work constructively with the Linux community is especially disappointing in light of the company's large presence in the Android market. That said, where there is life, there is change, and that is just what happened yesterday. Torvalds publicly gave a thumbs-up to Nvidia for contributing basic support for the recently released Nvidia K1 processor to Nouveau; something that was totally unexpected but received with open arms. 'Hey, this time I'm raising a thumb for nvidia. Good times,' said Linus."

Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+?

[game kid]

Torvalds has said in the past something about that he doesn't want to associate with "free software" (or at least FSF) types because they're so "extreme" or such (can't find a link sorry). (Also that if a GNU kernel or 386BSD had existed that he probably wouldn't've wrote Linux [wikipedia.org].)

That doesn't excuse G+ use (the first link actually caught me off guard...me and my stupid blind-clicking), but he doesn't see himself as so much of a strict FOSS advocate, so you probably see why he wouldn't give as much of a crap about whether the publishing channel is FOSS as, say, you or rms.

Re:Why do Free/Open Source gurus use Google+?

[Jakeula]

Google+, despite what a lot of people think, is very popular for companies to utilize for work projects. Hangouts is a great way to create conference calls, and since its tied into your other Google services like Drive, you can pretty much use it as a company intranet. I have been a contractor for companies that had employees across the states, and most of them have used G+ in the way I described. I would simply be added to a hangout for meetings with the team, they would place the files I needed access to on Drive and then there was little risk of me getting access to more critical business stuff. I was also part of a contracting team that just had a G+ page, and we would meet with clients in the exact same way. I personally didn't like this method, as I prefer to have more face time with clients, but it seemed to work well as a free platform to do business.

If we assume that the Linux team does something similar, its probably easy for Linus to get his ideas across on a social media platform where a decent portion of his development community lives. I have seen many ex-Google friends follow this same trend when they leave Google and create their start-ups. Chris Messina do it with NeonMob, as well as a few others that I met at Plus20. I cannot say this is necessarily the single best method, but it might be that they don't like FB, Twitter's limitations make it harder to utilize in this manner, so G+ is the next best place to put your ideas down for a large user base to view.

In the wake of the Snowden revelations...

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Another factor that might be pushing vendors to provide information to open source developers and/or publishing open source drivers is the fallout from the Snowden revelations.

People worldwide have awakened to the possibility that malware may be imbedded in closed drivers and firmware (including closed "binary blobs" embedded in open-source drivers). Indeed, it WAS imbedded in some - and sold as a feature. (Example: Intel's AMT, early versions of which lived in and ran from the Ethernet interface firmware, before it was moved to the Northbridge.)

Even if it isn't contaminated, a vendor can't SHOW that it's not contaminated as long as it's closed. So to convince jittery customers that the device is safe, the vendor needs to have open drivers and firmware available.

A vendor's own souce may include licensed code from others, making it hard for the vendor to open its own code (and perhaps contaminating its own developers). On the other hand, releasing the necessary information to the open souce community can lead to fully open support - at negligable cost (excluding perceived risk of exposing company secret-sauce recipes to the world - which won't matter if the customers stop buying the sauce-covered product, or demand falls enough for them to lose their competitive position).

So the Snowden revalations have created a strong incentive for vendors to enable open source developers.

Re:Collaboration strictly limited to Tegra K1+

[drinkypoo]

It's not news that nVidia will never be able to release full information on their legacy lines. They're encumbered by having got into bed with Microsoft. They tied their cards closely to DirectX and they'll never escape. The Tegra product is a wholly separate line not tainted by that relationship.