[PLUG] A bit confused about 2.6 kernel and X drivers

[AthlonRob]

On Thursday 03 June 2004 04:16 pm, Paul Johnson wrote:
> AthlonRob <athlonrob at axpr.net> writes:
> > Legally, they'd find themselves fighting a lot of lawsuites, I fear,
> > if they opened their driver code up.
>
> So what?  They should be thinking about their customers first, from
> there the revenue will follow.

The issue as it was explained on the LKML a while back, is this:

In our Patent-happy world, it is virtually impossible to create any computer 
hardware that doesn't step on some patent somebody has somewhere, especially 
if you're designing something as complex as a graphics card.  It simply isn't 
feasible to make sure your hardware violates no patents out there already.

If they released the source code to their drivers, everybody would begin 
inspecting it for evidence of violations.  Regardless of whether or not there 
are any violations, they're going to be sued.  As the only people to win in a 
lawsuite are the lawyers and consultants, that would cause nVidia to lose 
money even if they won the suites.  Guess who will foot that bill?

We, the consumers, will foot that bill.

So, look at it from nVidia's point of view.  Right now, they aren't losing a 
significant number of customers because of their closed-source driver model.  
What happens if they open their drivers?  They get sued.  They have to raise 
prices.  They lose more customers than they gain.  How does this make good 
business sense?

Rob