Your hint, however, is to read my analysis and think about all of the possible steps NVIDIA could take which I might consider good. No, as far as I know the complete driver will not have source code made public. Anything could happen, though.
Also, an astute correspondant (who shall remain nameless but who knows much much more about OpenGL than most) points out that the new ATI Radeon has fantastic performance and, as an extremely nice bonus, Precision Insight is writing open source drivers. These are the kind of smart, talented, and dedicated folks that lend credence to my argument that there are more good programmers not working for your company than are. If you're concerned about having driver source available for your hardware, here's a company willing to provide it.
The good news is that NVIDIA is listening to my concerns and I look forward to sharing with you what I have learned. (There is no bad news.)
Hello, I purchased a TNT2 card in the middle of last year due to your company's fresh stance on the Linux operating system -- it is my belief that the Linux and free software communities should support companies that support us. As you are probably aware, the state of the drivers for XFree86 has languished since that point. Granted, there have been many improvements in Linux and related pieces of software since then. It is the nature of free software to evolve rapidly. Still, the initial promises seem to have been largely set aside. Though there is a very talented group of individuals dedicated to providing a high-quality open source driver pool supporting GLX (Open GL in an X Window), the now-and-then driver releases (obfuscated source code) from your company have not provided much help. Regardless of any assistance from NVIDIA, Matrox, 3dfx, or other card vendors, these programmers will continue their good work. They have even managed to fix dozens of bugs in the obfuscated source released in January, even while adding performance enhancements. Many of the comments on this Slashdot article: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/03/21/0955231.shtml express similar disappointments with NVIDIA. Many of us feel that our trust has been bent. Supporting free software involves more than a verbal commitment and a few nominally open releases here and there. We do understand your desire to protect your substantial research and development investments, and we also realize that creating a high-quality driver on multiple platforms involves a lot of hard work. I do not speak for anyone besides myself, but I would mention that the reason for purchasing my video card (excellent 2D and 3D performance -- under Linux -- with source code available) is largely lost at this point. Soon I will begin exploring the possibility of having your company buy back my card so that I can put my support behind a company truly interested in working with the community. Though I regret that it has come to this point, I am willing to wait a while longer -- with the recent release of XFree86 version 4.0, the upcoming new drivers were promised to have significant performance improvements. I have also set up a web page chronicling my actions in this process, soliciting the opinions of fellow TNT2 chipset owners. It is located at: http://snafu.wgz.org/chromatic/nvidia.html I look forward to your response in this matter.Hopefully I'll hear something by next Wednesday. I'll keep you updated. This document may be mirrored (in its entirety) on any other web site, provided that any modifications are clearly marked, and a link is provided to the original location at http://snafu.wgz.org/chromatic/nvidia.html. return to my index