Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#151

Post by JohnHaugeland » Wed, Dec 27, 2017, 3:36 PM UTC

acd wrote: post #56

forgotpassagan wrote: post #5

In good news, this may finally force a court case around EULA's, which basically everyone have known for a decade as bullshit. Having to agree to draconian terms to use something you own is ridiculous. If EULA's become enforceable there's nothing preventing a toaster maker from banning you from toasting bagels in your machine and countless other absurd usurious machinations. EULA 'shrinkwrap' license agreements are a…

The thing with EULAs is that you do not own the product. You are licensed to use the product under the company’s draconian terms. Agree that there needs to be new consumer laws protecting consumers. A contract used in the old times 1800s to be one to two pages of simple English that both parties negotiated the agreed terms on. Now EULas almost requires a degree in law to understand yet you abide to the terms under ci…

"Can you limit free speech?"

Yes, in every country on Earth, for very obvious reasons

Ever signed a non-disclosure agreement?

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#152

Post by JohnHaugeland » Wed, Dec 27, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

Too wrote: post #88

greglindahl wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A large amount of computing equipment is sold with the restriction that it not be used to control a nuclear power plant.

Did you just make that up? Safety critical systems integrators only buy computing equipment explicitly designed to be safety critical. That's a requirement from the system designer (or possibly the law), not the other way around. If a nuclear plant designer go npm install random package that doesn't explicitly say it's not designed for nuclear plants no amount of lawyers will be able to sue the package maintainer if…

I mean, it's actually very common

To underscore this, go look at the Java license agreement, which forbids its use in any life critical environment

You can't even use Java to raise and lower the wooden arm in front of a toll bridge

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#153

Post by JohnHaugeland » Wed, Dec 27, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #143

Veratyr wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you read my comment. I said that they're likely motivated by greed but there _exists_ a legitimate reason too. I didn't say that _is_ their reason, just that it exists.

If your assessment of GeForce reliability is correct, then there's no need for the clause in the EULA at all: people will try to use them in a datacenter, they will fail, and people will use the DC-oriented cards instead. But that's not the case. Many people are finding they can use GeForce cards in a datacenter just fine, and it's cheaper than buying the DC-oriented cards. This is a money grab, pure and simple. Not…

consider the warranty

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#154

Post by lathiat » Thu, Dec 28, 2017, 2:07 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #144

lathiat wrote: post #53

Realistically, this change is most likely aimed at "forcing" the hand of very large companies to co-operate with using Tesla instead of GeForce-based stuff. Think Amazon, Large Supercomputers, etc. They probably won't care or chase the smaller folks (be careful if you get too big though :-) I wonder if these terms are also on the Linux downloads?

In the case of Amazon, who is responsible? Amazon might provide the hardware to their customer via an EC2 instance, but it's the end customer who downloads, installs, and uses the driver. The EULA restriction is on using the driver, not the hardware.

This is true, but (1) Amazon likely has special agreements with NVIDIA for all sorts of reasons, if they did this kind of thing against NVIDIAs wishes they'd just push back with those agreements (e.g. pricing on proper GPUs, etc) (2) Many big customers won't like it

This kind of behavior works best for smaller players, who are the ones they don't really care about either.

Re: Nvidia’s New Policy Limits GeForce Data Center Usage

#155

Post by duncan_bayne » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 9:04 AM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #87

duncan_bayne wrote: post #83

And here it is again: https://xkcd.com/743/ "It's the world's tiniest open-source violin." As much as I disagree with most of RMS's politics, the man has been proved right time and time again with respect to the dangers of building on proprietary software. This is just the latest in a long, long line of outrages. When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-like relationship with proprie…

> When will we as a development community quit this weird Stockholm-syndrome-like relationship with proprietary systems vendors? When most companies stop treating open source as a way to decrease their development costs, or as a legal way of doing piracy. I was big into open source for a decade, but it hardly payed most bills. Only software that requires consulting, training, or can be hidden behind a server wall is…

I think you may have missed my point (which in turn implies I didn't explain it well ;) ).

What I meant was: if you're building a system for your own use (including things like ML platforms and SaaS sites) why pick a target platform that is known hostile?