NVIDIA FreeBSD Kernel Feature Requests, interesting info for dfly?

[Emiel Kollof]

Op zaterdag 1 juli 2006 01:35, schreef Jose timofonic:
> Hello,
>
> I found this on osnews
> (http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=15056) and maybe
> it can be interesting for DragonFly too...
>
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html

It's probably not. Here's why:

Short answer: 
	NVIDIA apparently has no interest in DragonFlyBSD.

Long Answer: 
	I used to be the maintainer of the DragonFlyBSD NVIDIA driver when the 
FreeBSD 4 userland and ours were the same ABI-wise. The only thing I needed 
to port was the kernel parts, and they were more or less open source (modulo 
one blob object which contained some OS-independant things). Suddenly, NVIDIA 
decided to ditch the FreeBSD 4 userland support and the only reply I got from 
them was similar to the short answer above minus the word "apparently" plus a 
lame excuse about not having the resources to release for another platform 
(which they contradicted by releasing drivers for Solaris).

Porting the kernel bits is easy, because hey, that stuff has source I can muck 
with. The userland parts are closed up and they won't provide binaries that 
are compatible with our userland. So that leaves us stuck.

Unless of course they suddenly contact us again about supporting DragonFlyBSD, 
but that doesn't seem likely.

The real fix here would be for NVIDIA to stop being bone-headed and just open 
source that stuff so more people can have a go at it, or, and that's a pretty 
big "or", them talking to a developer (like, oh, say, me for example) that 
will do the porting for them. Unless they suddenly see the light, fat chance 
they will go for either.

[snip text from nvidia]

> Personally I don't like the use of closed-source
> device drivers, but maybe some suggestions mentioned
> on that message thread can be good for giving some
> ideas and improving DragonFly in many tasks too.

I doubt it.

> Devs: What are your think about it? :)

My opinion? Well nice for FreeBSD. But it's most probably not for us.

Cheers,
Emiel
-- 
You need more time; and you probably always will.
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