this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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Linux 6.6 To Better Protect Against The Illicit Behavior Of NVIDIA's Proprietary Driver (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 1 year ago by ono@lemmy.ca to c/linux@lemmy.world
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[–] dan_linder@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not an expert but this is what I understand from a podcast l listened to (https://twit.tv/shows/untitled-linux-show):

There's a subset of Linux users who desire or need GPL compliant environments for they purposes (personal or work related).

There's a kernel flag that is set to track if the drivers or gas loaded are also 100% GPL.

NVidia wrote their own video driver which is NOT GPL compliant, so as soon as they are loaded the kennel flag is set to "not GPL". To get around the simple checks for GPL compliant drivers, NVidia wrote a wrapper (a "condom") to lie that it was GPL-compliant when it was violating the GPL flag meaning.

The Linux 6.6 release apparently has more protections to keep NVidia from working around the GPL check. (For now...)

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Interesting. I wonder why Nvidia cares.

[–] d3Xt3r@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

nVidia doesn't, but lawyers do. License violations are not cool, regardless of who does it.

[–] baggins@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

They must care otherwise why would they bother to hack the GPL flag. 🤷