Summary
Highlights
The relationship between NVIDIA and open source has historically been complex. While improvements have been made, NVIDIA's approach differs significantly from companies like AMD, which fully embrace open-source drivers.
The Nouveau project has been providing open-source NVIDIA drivers since 2005. The Nova project, a newer Rust-based driver, aims to support post-GSP GPUs. An NVIDIA employee, Alexandre Courbot, has become a co-maintainer of the Nova core.
Alexandre Courbot's addition as co-maintainer brings valuable expertise to the Nova project. His involvement and contributions are viewed as a significant step for the project's legitimacy and potential as a viable driver solution.
NVIDIA seems to be testing the waters with open-source drivers by allowing engineers to contribute to community projects and even hiring maintainers of those projects. Unlike Asahi Linux and Apple, NVIDIA isn't barring their employees from working on community driver projects demonstrating a kind of tacit, or even active support.
The video speculates that NVIDIA may be observing the progress of open-source drivers and could potentially shift towards them in the future, especially as older GPUs are deprecated. This would allow them to leverage community efforts while maintaining some control.
The video concludes by asking viewers for their opinions on NVIDIA's motives and strategy regarding open-source drivers. Asking the viewers to share their own analysis of the topic.