- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA’s default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author’s intent.
Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver.
Oh wow the comments on Phoronix for this one are bonkers.
From what I understand (because it wasn’t clear to me from either of the TLDRs posted here) Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver has been calling parts of the kernel that they shouldn’t be, because their driver is closed source.
These seem to be parts of the kernel that another company may own patents to, but has only licensed it to the kernel for free use with GPL open source code only, i.e. closed source/proprietary code is not allowed to use it.
Nvidia seems to have open sourced a tiny communication shim to try and bypass this restriction, so their closed source driver talks to the shim, and the shim talks to the restricted code in the kernel, that Nvidia does not have a license to use. This is a DMCA violation, hence why the Kernel devs are putting in preventions to block the shim, as far as I can see.
I don’t understand the small minority of commenters there defending a la soulless corp Nvidia, who is blatantly in the wrong here. Some commenters have gone as far as to call the Linux kernel maintainers “zealots”, would not be surprised if they are alts for Nvidia devs…
Edit: typo
Then isn’t the correct solution to sue Nvidia?
It’s a legal issue with a legal solution.
You dont sue someone with deeper pockets than you.
This is what’s wrong in so many countries.
Yeah probably, but Nvidia can afford lawyers and delays for years. Much longer than any oss group could afford
So you want the company that licensed the patents to the Linux kernel for open source use to have to sue Nvidia for wrongly using their code? You want the company to have to spend a bunch of money suing Nvidia and possibly lose which would open the flood gates to more closed source code leeching off the Linux kernel?
Yeah that’s going to make them want to keep licensing their IP to the Linux Foundation (which they’re probably doing for free).
Or the maintainers can just submit a fairly simple patch to ensure that the kernel and the patents are being respected. Do you really think the first approach is the way to go?
Because sueing is never great
Neither is having your copyright infringed. Neither is wasting volunteer manpower playing a technical game of cat and mouse
apparently suing in these cases would mean having authorization from ALL contributors…
Just a perspective on why people would support NVIDIA here:
They don’t believe in copyright law so they don’t mind whoever infringe on them. Especially since here it would make the proprietary driver work better.
They do care about copyright law but think having a working driver outweighs respecting them.
Not my opinion here just saying that for some people usability trumps any other aspects.
I don’t believe in copyright law, but I especially don’t believe in partially enforced copyright law. Nvidia doesn’t get to use copyright to protect their proprietary code while infringing on the copyright of FOSS.
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Good read. I think the root is simply, don’t care about the rights of others if it is going to cost them something personally.
Also, some of us are using Nvidia because we rely on software that doesn’t work on AMD. I really enjoy using Linux, but if it’s going to make my life difficult I’ll go back to using Windows with WSL.
I agree Nvidia should resolve the licensing issues, but man GPL zealots get a such a raging hard-on for anything Nvidia related it’s funny to watch.
Them becoming raging zealots is kind of the only realistic way to defend the GPL though. If they don’t, it’s just going to get treated like toilet paper. I’d much rather have the angry hate mob than to be disrespected by big companies who can otherwise just get away with whatever they want.
And I’d like hardware that works, and proprietary drivers are really the only way that happens
AMD and Intel both have fully featured, full performance open source graphics drivers.
Not to knock on your point but the AMD drivers on Linux don’t support hardware video encoding unfortunately, so technically it’s not full-featured
Depends on your distro. Fedora and Manjaro removed it.
And you can simply get it from rpm fusion on fedora, and I’d guess something similar on manjaro. It’s just gone from the official fedora repositories for liability reasons. rpm fusion as a defacto standard for desktops/laptops was enabled there before that for what, like 99% of the installs?
I take advantage of hardware video encoding on linux with amd’s open source drivers almost every day.
I probably sbould’ve specified H.264/H.265, unless I’m missing something?
Ehm, not at all??
There’s so much hardware with non-proprietary drivers.
Why do you think that? Companies can open source their drivers at will, in fact at this point NVIDIA is the only major player in GPU market who hasn’t done this, what do you think makes this particular hardware so special that needs a closed source driver when every other competitor doesn’t? In fact what could possibly be the reason for a driver to need to be closed source?
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Or maybe we should keep companies, which rake in billions of dollars, to a much higher standard??
Nvidia could be better at open-sourcing their stuff. But they don’t. Blame them, not GPL.
Which software?
3D rendering software using iRay. I’ve started trying to learn Blender, but I’ve still got thousands spent on assets and hardware which means I’m not going to run out tomorrow and pickup a new card. It all works fine under Wine, but the amount of Nvidia hate on here is just tiring.
So you use iRay as the rendering engine for Blender? And (I’m assuming a lot here) iRay doesn’t use CUDA, OpenCL etc, but straight talks to the GPU via graphics drivers, thus having hardware depency for nvidia GPU?
Phoronix comments are always wild
Remind me of those who supports Red Hat for blocking sources and telling those who downstreams “code thief with no contribution to open source” lol.
I did not “support” Red Hat but I was pretty vocally in opposition to most of the reaction to it. I found the willful inaccuracy and even flagrant dishonestly from the “community” close to disgusting at times. So, you may be including people like me in your comment.
In this case, it seems very straight-forward that NVIDIA is in the wrong. Not just ethically but legally as well.
My own read is that some of the people slamming Red Hat are defending NVIDIA now. Coming away from that experience, I the over-arching principle that many adhere to most is simply whatever is best for them. Red Hat was wrong because people felt entitled to something. The kernel devs are wrong ( and NVIDIA right ) because people feel entitled to something.
They think they’re gonna get a free 4090 in the mail any day now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
“I’m also very happy to point out that nVidia has been the worst […] so nVidia, “fuck you!””
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Agree with your analysis, just pointing out that Phoronix forums have always been like this, or at least the tendency is to insult each other. Their culture is more toxic than any other Linux forums I’ve seen, maybe besides /g/.
I need to upgrade my computer soon… this crap makes me not want to go Nvidia again. (Running a looooong in the tooth 1060.)
Go ahead, I just ordered a new build specifically with a non-Nvidia card for the same reasons.
The new 150$ range Amd cards are enticing. I could bring new life into my rx5500 htpc.
Thanks for the ELI5. I read the article but had a hard time parsing the significance other than Nvidia proprietary drivers bad
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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
It is copyright infringement. Nvidia (and everyone writing kernel modules) has to choose between:
Remember that the kernel is maintained by volunteers and by engineers funded by/working for many companies, including Nvidia’s direct competitors, and Nvidia is worth billions of dollars. Nvidia is incredibly obnoxious to infringe on the kernel’s copyright. To me it is 100% the appropriate response to show them zero tolerance for their copyright infringement.
To expand a bit:
The GPL-only symbols restriction is there for the benefit of proprietary developers. It ensures that their work doesn’t become a “derivative work” of the kernel’s internals, by sticking to using only the published and documented interfaces. Using published APIs doesn’t make your work a legally derivative work of the system behind those APIs (i.e. the kernel).
If your code needs to mess around in the kernel internals, it is very likely a derivative work of the kernel; which means you need the permission of the kernel authors if you want to publish that code legally.
The only terms under which the kernel authors grant that permission are the terms of the GPL.
By circumventing the GPL-only symbols restriction, Nvidia is demonstrating that their driver code needs to mess with kernel internals, not just the published APIs. And that means that it probably is a derivative work of the kernel. Which, in turn, means that those drivers must be published under the GPL in order to avoid violating the kernel copyrights.
Basically: Linus drew a line in the sand and said “As long as you don’t step over this line, you’re not pirating the kernel by releasing proprietary drivers.” And Nvidia stepped over that line.
Because the license for the patents that the Linux kernel is utilizing says that the code utilizing those patents must be open source. So therefore Nvidia is accessing those parts of the kernel illegally and against the license the Linux Foundation has. The Linux Foundation could lose the rights to use those patents if they’re not respecting the license.
Cause the GPL is a virus
And it’s a good thing. Fuck proprietary software 😎
We’ll be down voted, but agreed.
If it’s a dmca violation then sue them. Do not create software “defenses” and do not make my computer experience worse.
With what money are they supposed to fight the multi billion dollar mega corpo exactly with dozens of lawyers??
Also, if they fight this in court then that would mean less money for development thus making your experience even worse….
Well then don’t! Revenge code which makes it worse for people who actually use Linux isn’t a way to do this.
Nvidia shipping proprietary code is what makes it worse for people who actually use Linux. They should open source their driver.
Because we don’t care about open source drama, we want an operating system that just works™ with our existing graphics cards and doesn’t get in the way of gaming.
Then let Nvidia deal with this drama of their own making. Linux works as intended.
So intentionally harmful to user experience. As usual.
The user experience is based around audited, reviewed, open source software. Everything from the licenses, distro policies, and kernel maintainership is based around that model and it has benefitted users far more than if Linux was a mess binary blobs that do not interoperate with each other in a well-defined and transparent manner.
AMD and Intel both manage just fine, along with hundreds of other companies supporting hundreds of other pieces of hardware on top of dozens of different CPU architectures. If Nvidia insists on being a special snowflake about this then it is 100% their problem.
From a legal perspective, nvidia has been illegally bypassing a software license by exploiting a loophole. Linux devs fixed the loophole.
I don’t see why I would be annoyed at Linux devs in these circumstances.
Then go install Windows.
If that is the case, then you should be very happy to leave Linux for a proprietary OS that Nvidia works on and properly supports.
This thing exists.
But you have to pay for it.
Otherwise you might have to deal with the wishes of the people you aren’t paying.
Okay, then continue not caring as the people who do take care of things. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.