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Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

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Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#41

Post by andromeduck »

karltk wrote: post #36
bsder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…

Not sure I'm able to follow your logic here, esp regarding "quickly render Linux useless" and "losing a lot of corporate seats". Linux is extremely pervasive by now: embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, super computers. Let's say NVIDIA boycotted Linux on account of the GPL. No more NVIDIA for Linux-based embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, supercomputers. What then? It certainly woul…

Losing the market leader for GPUs at a time when accelerators have almost become mainstream absolutely massive.

Sure it might not be the end of the world for many existing applications but think of the new/growing growing markets they basically control right now - deep neural networks, car automation, photorealistic offline rendering, accelerated simulation, accelerated HPC, gaming etc.

With the interest and demand from all those and potentially other segments like say Android could be enough to push BSD ahead of Linux in a few years and be absolutely crippling for the future prospects of Linux.

It'd basically be like GCC vs Clang all over again.

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#42

Post by andromeduck »

sangnoir wrote: post #34
bsder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving aside the fact that this isn't really settled legal theory... Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence. Linux could disappear tomorrow, and there are plenty of free Unix-like alternatives that easily fill the void. If nVidia disappeared tomorrow, there are lots of Linux contracts that would simply stop (and most likely switch to Windows). Now, you can argue ide…

> Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence. Maybe for the desktop, but not overall: Nvidia is heavily pushing supercomputing/machine learning and it can't afford to ignore Linux in this space (since Linux dominates). If Nvidia were to abandon Linux, they would be gifting AMD a free come-back opportunity.

I think you vastly underestimate how far those guys would go to eek out every last bit of practical performance.

Going with second rate option simply doesnt work when you're spending hundreds of millions per machine on the high end.

I mean do you really think it told really be easier to port a thousand heavily optimized applications/libs CUDA to OpenCL than the handfull of librsties that dont alrady work with BSD from Linux?!

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#43

Post by berkut »

karltk wrote: post #36
bsder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…

Not sure I'm able to follow your logic here, esp regarding "quickly render Linux useless" and "losing a lot of corporate seats". Linux is extremely pervasive by now: embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, super computers. Let's say NVIDIA boycotted Linux on account of the GPL. No more NVIDIA for Linux-based embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, supercomputers. What then? It certainly woul…

Most independent people who need 3D performance for CAD might be using Windows, but the VFX industry need 3D performance on the desktop and they heavily use Linux and NVIDIA (at least at the high level). AMD is almost nowhere to be found - it's all CUDA (for any GPU compute stuff) and NVIDIA's drivers.

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#44

Post by bsder »

karltk wrote: post #36
bsder wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The GPL wrapper method has long been considered to be a subterfuge that GPL lawyers think judges would be able to see through. However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless. If nVidia, for example, got scorched by the GPL and started releasing binary-only drivers only for FreeBSD, Linux would start losing a lot of…

Not sure I'm able to follow your logic here, esp regarding "quickly render Linux useless" and "losing a lot of corporate seats". Linux is extremely pervasive by now: embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, super computers. Let's say NVIDIA boycotted Linux on account of the GPL. No more NVIDIA for Linux-based embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, supercomputers. What then? It certainly woul…

> It certainly wouldn't make a dent in the embedded space

The embedded space follows Linux because their alternative desktop was Linux (if it wasn't Windows).

You assume that a GPL slapfight only takes out nVidia. It would take out lots of people who have binary-only drivers who currently make Linux their home. The WiFi manufacturers being some of the most important ones.

And that WOULD impact embedded Linux very much.

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#45

Post by icebraining »

djsumdog wrote: post #32
delsarto wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glibc is a bad example, as they have explict linkage exceptions There seems to be some thought that vmware are idiots and copied a bunch of Linux code and didn't release it. It's more about when something becomes a derivative work. Much more subtle

The implications of this are pretty broad reaching. I think it'd be amazing if, at the end of this, the VMWare kernels all becoming opensource.

That'll never happen, one can't force someone else to abide by one's license, only force them to stop using one's work and pay damages.

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#46

Post by sangnoir »

tzs wrote: post #35
sangnoir wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence. Maybe for the desktop, but not overall: Nvidia is heavily pushing supercomputing/machine learning and it can't afford to ignore Linux in this space (since Linux dominates). If Nvidia were to abandon Linux, they would be gifting AMD a free come-back opportunity.

What if Nvidia provided good ⋆BSD drivers? According to the answers from Greg Lindahl and Eugene Miya on Quora to the question "Why is the OS landscape of Supercomputers dominated by Linux instead of BSD?" [1] the Linux dominance is largely an historical oddity rather than due to some inherent superiority of Linux. If for some reason supercomputer builders could no longer use the best GPUs in supercomputers, would th…

>If for some reason supercomputer builders could no longer use the best GPUs in supercomputers, would they stick with Linux or would they follow the hardware and switch to a ⋆BSD on the compute nodes?

I have no idea what the answer would be, but my guess is it would hinge on 1) AMDs reaction, and the performance hit (if any) of switching to AMD GPUs on Linux and 2) the performance hit (if any) of switching the OS to *BSD

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#47

Post by Elhana »

xorcist wrote: post #40
delsarto wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you expect them to say? Linux is a huge part of what we do? Here's how I see it. Vmkernel has a driver API. It's documented, versioned, comes with a ddk and has drivers written directly to it. As we all know, Linux basically has driver apis. They are not as explicit as the vmkernel driver apis; they are not versioned and deliberately unstable - but if you've written a line of kernel code you know they are th…

> Now it seems it is OK to ship a binary blob driver that links against Linux driver apis. Nvidia, ati, Several copyright holders in the kernel are on the record that what Nvidia is doing is not ok. Linus himself is known for some harsh words. In theory you only need one who is willing to put up a fight. Your business model should not depend on winning a court case concerning the actual license as it is put in print.…

Actually, if I understand what Linus says here[1] correctly, porting modules from other OSes to work with linux seems to be ok, writing closed source modules specifically for linux kernel is not ok. But overall still a gray area.

Other kernel devs indeed claim that everything that links with a kernel is a derivative work and EXPORT_SYMBOL / EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL distinction means nothing.

[1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/3/228

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#48

Post by bluejekyll »

phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #38
bluejekyll wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think his point is that if the nvidia company felt threatened by Linux, then they would immediately stop producing for Linux. In which case the Linux ecosystem would shrink, and the platform would become less useful. Would this actually happen? Would it effect Linuxes popularity? That's harder to predict.

They're already not producing for Linux, though; they're producing for themselves and flouting the GPL to expand their market.

Are they really flouting the GPL though? I think you could make a better case that SteamOS is, with an integrated Nvidia driver.

What makes this different IMO from VMWare is that they are not creating a work that exists purely b/c of Linux, instead they a making a piece of software that allows their hardware to work with a Linux based machine.

I think those are two very different types GPL violation. One really does flout the GPL and exploit Linux kernel devs, the other I think is generally viewed as an enhancement to Linux, thus less interest in fighting it.

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#49

Post by crzwdjk »

tzs wrote: post #35
sangnoir wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence. Maybe for the desktop, but not overall: Nvidia is heavily pushing supercomputing/machine learning and it can't afford to ignore Linux in this space (since Linux dominates). If Nvidia were to abandon Linux, they would be gifting AMD a free come-back opportunity.

What if Nvidia provided good ⋆BSD drivers? According to the answers from Greg Lindahl and Eugene Miya on Quora to the question "Why is the OS landscape of Supercomputers dominated by Linux instead of BSD?" [1] the Linux dominance is largely an historical oddity rather than due to some inherent superiority of Linux. If for some reason supercomputer builders could no longer use the best GPUs in supercomputers, would th…

NVIDIA does produces drivers for FreeBSD[1]. I don't know if they're considered "good" or not, but they definitely aim to have the same features and quality as on Linux.

[1] http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

Re: Report from the VMware GPL court hearing

#50

Post by phjesusthatguy3 »

bluejekyll wrote: post #48
phjesusthatguy3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're already not producing for Linux, though; they're producing for themselves and flouting the GPL to expand their market.

Are they really flouting the GPL though? I think you could make a better case that SteamOS is, with an integrated Nvidia driver. What makes this different IMO from VMWare is that they are not creating a work that exists purely b/c of Linux, instead they a making a piece of software that allows their hardware to work with a Linux based machine. I think those are two very different types GPL violation. One really does…

They're flouting the GPL in the sense that they produced a binary-only driver enabled by a compatibility layer released under GPL that, in my uninformed opinion, probably violates the GPL. It still doesn't do me any good, though; I'm on my second laptop with Optimus graphics, and they're just not going to make their hardware work on this machine when it's not running Windows. Fortunately, I only need 3D acceleration when I'm gaming, and the machine came with a Windows license, so dual-booting is an option for me.
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