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Linux 6.6 To Better Protect Against The Illicit Behavior Of NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M] to c/linux@sopuli.xyz
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/4244409

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[+] -53 points 3 years ago (6 children)

This is why Linux will always struggle to be mainstream. They can't shake the grip of GPL. Forcing open source at gun point just alienates people.

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  • [–] 52 points 3 years ago

    They can't shake the grip of GPL.

    That's the point. They don't want to shake the grip of GPL. Nor should they, linux is already mainstream, being the most used kernel in the world.

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  • [+] 30 points 3 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [+] -6 points 3 years ago (3 children)

    Hey let a man dream of a Linux freed from the exclusionary ideology of GNU. And if not, well you guys are more than welcome to hole up in your "No closed sourced allowed fort." I and others will just move to the equally capable BSD Unixs

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  • [–] [S] 26 points 3 years ago*

    It alienates nvidia. Are any other mega-corps being difficult enough to cause problems with linux?

    As for its struggle to become mainstream (I assume you refer to desktop), I'd credit that to Linux not being commercial. And hence not having a marketing department. As soon as you DO market it, it takes off like a rocket. (Android, ChromeOS, SteamDeck)

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  • [+] -7 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Thank you for all the replies. Really should me how boned Linux is. And that alot of you have absolutely no idea how the GPL works. If you call a GPL function, the calling code MUST be GPL too.

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  • [+] -22 points 3 years ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] [S] 27 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    The kernel isn't requiring the driver be GPL.

    Nvidias driver straight up violated the license by talking to parts of the kernel it wasn't legally allowed to talk to, by shipping its own tiny open source shim to sit between the proprietary and open source parts they wanted to illegally have interoperate.

    This is a case of nvidia straight up actually breaking the law with a literal hack. Prompting linux into implementing new security measures.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    The shim module smuggles GPL-only kernel symbols into the non-GPL binary blob. Because the actual module using those symbols is not GPL compatible this violates the GPL license.

    From Linus Torvalds mouth:

    anybody who were to change a xyz_GPL to the non-GPL one in order to use it with a non-GPL module would almost immediately fall under the "willful infringement" thing, and that it would make it MUCH easier to get triple damages and/or injunctions, since they clearly knew about it.

    In short, nvidia is playing with "please sue me" button.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Windows has components other companies are not allowed to use too. Why should it be different on Linux.

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  • [+] -2 points 3 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Windows actually doesn't allow any driver to work fully. We would still be in the wild west that DOS and Windows 9x drivers were.

    Windows has a massive quantity of components only Microsoft products can use, or can only be used in a certain way. A third-party application loading them might risk their developer keys being revoked without a officially signed license of usage, if the keys are even present. But most situation end up with the software getting blocked by Defender or Smart Screen or the user's Windows install being considered non-genuine. This is not only for security, but also to protect the license of the many components Windows is using.

    You see no meltdown from Windows users because most don't care when Microsoft tightens their usage rules. Linux users tend to be more tech savvy due to the need of curiosity to leave the Windows ecosystem, meaning they can care about this because they also tend to be actual part of the community, instead of being strangers or passerbys.

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  • [+] -5 points 3 years ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    I don't think I mentioned CUDA.

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