Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?

From: Henning P. Schmiedehausen (hps@intermeta.de)
Date: Thu Jan 02 2003 - 03:51:07 EST

Erik Andersen <andersen@codepoet.org> writes:

>Ahh, but replicated effort is something that open source people
>do very well at indeed. If nvidia provided non-functional GPL
>source code with all the proprietary 3rd party bits ripped out,
>I would expect a hoard of developers would jump at the chance to
>fixup the non-functional mess, clean it up, reimplement all the
>missing proprietary bits. I'd bet you $20 US we could have a
>functional driver within 2 weeks. And have a high quality driver
>roughly equal to their proprietary one within 6 months. Thats
>the way things work around these parts of the net. I bought a

Ahhh, yes. I know. Replace "nvidia" with "netscape" and "driver" with
"browser" and reread your paragraph. I remember having read exactly
the same thing when netscape told us that they will "open the source
to the navigator".

And where were we six months later?

        Regards
                Henning 

-- 
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen       -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH     hps@intermeta.de

Am Schwabachgrund 22  Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0   info@intermeta.de
D-91054 Buckenhof     Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20   
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/

This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Tue Jan 07 2003 - 22:00:17 EST