Drivers license..

[Nopik]

Hello.

Currently NV drivers udner Linux are distributed as binary and
whole documentation is not GPL. Is there any possibility that situation will change in future? Anybody got any clues?

[Klaus-P]

I think you should ask the nv chair(wo)man to get answers
or all those customers who are purchasing nv hardware
running under a very well-known commercial operating system so to speak.
So, as long as a company will not OR is not allowed to publish source-code
because of other license issues, etc,...there won't be any GPL or
open source code i think. Or perhaps i should better say enough good technical info
material for those people who want to write their own driver software.
Remember also the socalled undocumented CPU instructions of chip
manufacturers.

[Chalnoth]

Supposedly, nVidia is not at liberty to release their drivers under an open license due to IP issues. Currently their driver source is obfuscated, and therefore almost unreadable.

[r0gu3]

Actually, their driver doesn't appear to be obfuscated at all...
Its just mostly precompiled (binary)... The source they give is fairly well commented, but is simply a basic interface to the kernel...

- r0gu3