Hope this does some good...
Phoronix.com
Please NVIDIA, Do Not Only What Is Right For You But For The Entire OSS Community! Open Up!
Didn't nouveu guys say though that specs won't help them anymore? I'll sign anyways, the more open the better.
This is the best move.
As Google and Dell say, it's time to open up..
AMD has shown real leadership on this matter, it would be nice if nVidia decided to "get with the picture" too.
For me, AMD hardware is the way to go because of their open source strategy. Do not lose customers by doing the same!
I do by every extent agree with this letter and share the opinion phrased in its content. Thank you, NVIDIA for doing what you already do for us, and thank you in advance for everything you'll do in future times.
2 month ago NVidia was the best choice for Linux users. Now ATI does better. Open your specs, you can do better too!
Please ;)
Thousands of people can fix bugs better for hundreds of OSes than one company.
Owner of, as far as I remember, 4 GeForce cards, I'd really love to see true Open Source drivers...
Nvidia proprietary driver is a total disaster when it comes to suspend/resume. Make it open source and we'll fix it for you.
please look at source code packages at sourceforge.net with a basic configure and Makefile and use that method, just gotta live Open Source...
Open Thy Blobbied Kode
Open specs would certainly help the development of third-party open drivers, and therefore improve the overall user experience with NVIDIA hardware on many alternative operating systems.
I'm currently enjoying my ATI powered laptop, and I would love to be able to do the same for my NVidia powered desktop computer.
NVidia closed-source driver is a real heaven to deal with after a couple of years of headache with r300, but being opensource would be really beneficial to the whole community, IMHO.
Probably going to buy a Radeon next time...
open driver specifications should be the one thing that every hardware manifacturer should do. Any IP could be well hiden in the firmware that runs on the actual device as long as it is not executed on the main CPU.
It should be great ! I enjoyed my goforce 4 go in my laptop with proprietary driver but have some trouble with suspend mode, etc.
I need free(free as in freedom) nvidia graphics card driver!!!
NVIDIA's binary driver for linux works excellent, and offers very good performance, but open-source drivers are essential to keeping our system free, and our control over the hardware. I have been a long-time nvidia user, and have lots of nvidia cards from the original riva tnt to a 8600GT, and although my newer cards are well supported, my older cards start to lack driver features, and even have many irritating bugs (like the geforce2mx AIGLX Xserver freeze). So, please consider opening you specs and/or drivers, NVIDIA.
Nvidia should give the users what they want and deserve. What they are doing now, is the same as selling a car as new, but then not giving the key.
I will most likely make the transition to an AMD card if more effort is not put into opening up NVIDIA drivers in the near future.
The community really needs this, not only the driver is closed source, but has dropped support for perfectly working old card like the GeForce2... An open source driver would never do that, but instead try to extract even the last drop out of it.
open source for everybody
When its done, it will be very late already.
open up
Student of Medicine, University of Padova
You should do it if you want to survive !
Nvidia makes good hardware, but if I had to change my grapic card (which is currently a nvidia one), I would currently take a ATI one, because of the new orientation of ATI/AMD. So please, tell me my next card could be a nvidia one.
Nvidia is the top dog in video acceleration from what I see right now. Only problem is if AMDs open driver become alot better than nvidia they will lose the edge at least on the Linux side and more people will switch. Keep it free and get the development you need from the community so you can keep up the good work on those chipsets. Thanks
In all honesty, this is the way it SHOULD be- and your competitors are doing the same level of effort that this open letter is asking of you. So, why not?
nVidia has proven themselves to be passably good maintainers, but only passably so. nVidia has, in fact, had the highest performance, most reliable closed-source drivers. But in the open source driver world, nVidia's OS integration and reliability just don't compare. Give me my hardware back.
As I'm currently using the Nvidia binary driver I would of course like to see Nvidia joining the open-source bandwagon.
oss driver is right strategy
Free Software Foundation has it as a priority for open video drivers... NVIDIA why don't you listen to everyone?!?!?
This would be a great bonus to the OSS community and would also help you (NVIDIA) remain competitive with respect to the open specifications/drivers provided by Intel and AMD/ATI.
probably not going to happen, read here : http://zerias.blogspot.com/2007/12/comment-on-nvidia.html
Join the 21st Century. You're selling pretty good hardware, just give me free drivers and I'm completely satisfied.
Please free them!
The forcedeth story is a good example how fertile a well balanced Open Source strategy can be. Of course the Open Source community knows about IP problems related to opening the binary driver, but more documentation on the chipsets is clearly possible!