Luis Chamberlain sent out the modules changes today for the Linux 6.6 merge window. Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols. Or in other words, bits that only true open-source drivers should be utilizing and not proprietary kernel drivers like NVIDIA’s default Linux driver in respecting the original kernel code author’s intent.
Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being. They ended up having a supported driver several weeks later. It will be interesting to see this time how long Linux 6.6+ thwarts their kernel driver.
Oh wow the comments on Phoronix for this one are bonkers.
From what I understand (because it wasn’t clear to me from either of the TLDRs posted here) Nvidia’s proprietary graphics driver has been calling parts of the kernel that they shouldn’t be, because their driver is closed source.
These seem to be parts of the kernel that another company may own patents to, but has only licensed it to the kernel for free use with GPL open source code only, i.e. closed source/proprietary code is not allowed to use it.
Nvidia seems to have open sourced a tiny communication shim to try and bypass this restriction, so their closed source driver talks to the shim, and the shim talks to the restricted code in the kernel, that Nvidia does not have a license to use. This is a DMCA violation, hence why the Kernel devs are putting in preventions to block the shim, as far as I can see.
I don’t understand the small minority of commenters there defending a la soulless corp Nvidia, who is blatantly in the wrong here. Some commenters have gone as far as to call the Linux kernel maintainers “zealots”, would not be surprised if they are alts for Nvidia devs…
Edit: typo
Then isn’t the correct solution to sue Nvidia?
It’s a legal issue with a legal solution.
You dont sue someone with deeper pockets than you.
This is what’s wrong in so many countries.
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Because sueing is never great
Neither is having your copyright infringed. Neither is wasting volunteer manpower playing a technical game of cat and mouse
apparently suing in these cases would mean having authorization from ALL contributors…
Just a perspective on why people would support NVIDIA here:
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They don’t believe in copyright law so they don’t mind whoever infringe on them. Especially since here it would make the proprietary driver work better.
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They do care about copyright law but think having a working driver outweighs respecting them.
Not my opinion here just saying that for some people usability trumps any other aspects.
They don’t believe in copyright law so they don’t mind whoever infringe on them. Especially since here it would make the proprietary driver work better.
I don’t believe in copyright law, but I especially don’t believe in partially enforced copyright law. Nvidia doesn’t get to use copyright to protect their proprietary code while infringing on the copyright of FOSS.
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Good read. I think the root is simply, don’t care about the rights of others if it is going to cost them something personally.
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Or maybe we should keep companies, which rake in billions of dollars, to a much higher standard??
Nvidia could be better at open-sourcing their stuff. But they don’t. Blame them, not GPL.
we rely on software that doesn’t work on AMD
Which software?
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So you use iRay as the rendering engine for Blender? And (I’m assuming a lot here) iRay doesn’t use CUDA, OpenCL etc, but straight talks to the GPU via graphics drivers, thus having hardware depency for nvidia GPU?
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I don’t understand the small minority of commenters there defending a la soulless corp Nvidia, who is blatantly in the wrong here.
They think they’re gonna get a free 4090 in the mail any day now.
Phoronix comments are always wild
Remind me of those who supports Red Hat for blocking sources and telling those who downstreams “code thief with no contribution to open source” lol.
I did not “support” Red Hat but I was pretty vocally in opposition to most of the reaction to it. I found the willful inaccuracy and even flagrant dishonestly from the “community” close to disgusting at times. So, you may be including people like me in your comment.
In this case, it seems very straight-forward that NVIDIA is in the wrong. Not just ethically but legally as well.
My own read is that some of the people slamming Red Hat are defending NVIDIA now. Coming away from that experience, I the over-arching principle that many adhere to most is simply whatever is best for them. Red Hat was wrong because people felt entitled to something. The kernel devs are wrong ( and NVIDIA right ) because people feel entitled to something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYWzMvlj2RQ
“I’m also very happy to point out that nVidia has been the worst […] so nVidia, “fuck you!””
But why is it a problem if they call on parts of the kernal they shouldn’t? is it just a privacy concern, does it also impact performance? i don’t understand
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Cause the GPL is a virus
And it’s a good thing. Fuck proprietary software 😎
We’ll be down voted, but agreed.
Because we don’t care about open source drama, we want an operating system that just works™ with our existing graphics cards and doesn’t get in the way of gaming.
From a legal perspective, nvidia has been illegally bypassing a software license by exploiting a loophole. Linux devs fixed the loophole.
I don’t see why I would be annoyed at Linux devs in these circumstances.
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Okay, then continue not caring as the people who do take care of things. Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.
Agree with your analysis, just pointing out that Phoronix forums have always been like this, or at least the tendency is to insult each other. Their culture is more toxic than any other Linux forums I’ve seen, maybe besides /g/.
If it’s a dmca violation then sue them. Do not create software “defenses” and do not make my computer experience worse.
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And that’s why I’m happy to see that the lock on modifying the Nvidia BIOS for their old graphics cards has finally been decrypted. That means that Nouveau will have a much easier route to make their open-source drivers work properly on the 10xx and 20xx cards, so we don’t have to rely on the tainted crumbs that Nvidia offered here. (Then again, I eventually moved to a 6600 specifically to no longer have to deal with this kind of shenanigans)
Man, that would be so nice. I forgot actually for a while that I was using Nouveau after I switched cause nvidia-dkms wouldn’t let me boot (1050ti). The only thing that reminds me is game performance. Wayland is great though.
Riddle me this, why is there such a thing as proprietary drivers for anything? Especially consumer facing products like this?
Don’t you want anyone and anything using your product in any situation? Help me understand NVIDIA’s bit with this?
Driver code might expose some underlying secret sauce they’re using in the hardware. That’s the justification they always used to give, at any rate. At this point, though, it’s probably some code they’ve inherited from an acquisition that has a bunch of legal encumbrance stopping it from being open sources.
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AMD isn’t, and they used to be significantly worse than Nvidia about proprietary drivers.
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People held the same opinion about them though. How is that not relevant?
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Whatever, dude.
I assume nVidia have licensed other code that they don’t have the rights to distribute the source code for.
I get what the GPL fans want here, but it’s just going to lead to a gimped driver, no driver, or an even larger shim between the open and closed source bits. The Linux market is too small for nVidia to care.
With GPUs being used for AI stuff and all sane people using Linux for servers, no, Linux market isn’t small at all for Nvidia.
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Likely a combination of 4 things:
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They have third party firmware in their blobs that they are under NDA regarding the source code.
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They believe in the source code is a large part of their success and don’t want to reveal it.
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They believe giving out the source code will allow many inferior variants of the software, impacting their brand.
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Control; the more source code they have in mesa the more of their code can be rejected by mesa. Keeping their stuff as blobs allows them to put in whatever hacks they want.
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They don’t want you to see the “if benchmark_xyz { do less work }” blocks of code.
a) Good for them
b) How long before NVIDIA throws up their hands at the whole thing and does their own Linux distro + pushes all their cloud AI customers to use it? (it doesn’t seem like they’re ever going to be shamed / coerced into actually open-sourcing their driver)
There’s an interesting discussion about the whole topic on the Phoronix forums about this. Some people claim that removing them and Nvidia’s current behavior is a DMCA violation:
- The kernel includes IP only licensed under GPLv2.
- While a module linked against the kernel isn’t necessarily a derived work which in turn would need to be licensed GPLv2 as well, there are specific interfaces that are meant for internal use and by their very nature would make your work derived if using them. These are the interfaces marked EXPORT_GPL_ONLY.
- Using these interfaces with a module not licensed GPLv2, you taint the kernel and violate the licensing.
- Removing the check, you aren’t necessarily yet violating GPLv2, but you’re removing a technical protection measure which is a violation of the DMCA.
It also raises the question why you’d remove checks that only prevent a possible GPLv2 violation if you’re not violating GPLv2 anyways as Nvidia claims.
you aren’t necessarily yet violating GPLv2, but you’re removing a technical protection measure which is a violation of the DMCA.
Isn’t overcoming a technical limit a violation itself? That’s what made DeCSS illegal. They didn’t have to prove anyone was actually copying DVDs with it, just that DeCSS could allow you to copy a DVD
Yes, even if it’s a dialog box with only a “No” button, despite how easy it would be to get it to return a different value.
DISCLAIMER: IANAL, this is not legal advice.
Not to be contrarian, but b) could well be a full decade of work and numerous individual projects
Lousy criminals. NVIDIA, I mean. If I wrote code like that, I’d be dragged in front of a judge and made to answer for breaking the DMCA. But if you’re a big, rich company, the government won’t touch you.
That’s just such a great image!
Made me lol
Yeah they’d do that with a card that looks like it’s from 2003 with those classic dual DVI ports. Stole it right out of some kid’s Quake 3 box. Try that with a 4090.
Give the gigantic heatsink, that might actually work just fine. The PCI brackets are just stamped aluminium after all.
What ever happened to the source code nvidia did release. Was it released in such a way to where it is not helpful?
That’s only for never generation cards, from 20xx series upwards I think.
But there’s still the proprietary driver for everything before that, including 1080 and such.They are not legally allowed to build drivers from the illegally acquired source code.
couldnt they do the thing where one team analyzes the leaked code and documents functions.
and a nother, clean room team, creates independent fresh code to achieve the same results as the original?
I mean, clean room activity like that has a strong precedent, going back to EA vs Sega at least. where EA stole a sega genesis dev kit, had one team document the functions, had another team independently create code to execute those functions,and made their own dev kid and put out non-approved sega carts (which is why the EA sega carts were taller and had the yellow plastic tag)
Sega sued and EA won due the clean room engineering and sega and EA came to some kind of sweetheart deal/comrpromise/settlement.
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I’ve always heard cleanroom, since you keep your coders completely isolated from the investigation team so there can be no question of code pollinating across, Just documentation to be reimplemented in a unique and different way.
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I don’t think they meant the hacked and released source code, I think they meant the kernel modules that Nvidia actually opensourced in may of '22
I have not had a look at it myself, but my understanding is, that that was/is only glue code to the closed source blob.
You are correct, it while it was technically driver for kernel, meaning it is using kernel driver api, it was not driver for graphic card. Just a bit different way to load binary blob.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The Linux 6.6 modules infrastructure is changing to better protect against the illicit behavior of NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver.
Most notable with the modules update is a change that better builds up the defenses against NVIDIA’s proprietary kernel driver from using GPL-only symbols.
Given that symbol_get was only ever intended for tightly cooperating modules using very internal symbols it is logical to restrict it to being used on EXPORY_SYMBOL_GPL and prevent nvidia from costly DMCA circumvention of access controls lawsuits.
Luis Chamberlain further added in today’s pull request: "Christoph Hellwig’s symbol_get() fix to Nvidia’s efforts to circumvent the protection he put in place in year 2020 to prevent proprietary modules from using GPL only symbols, and also ensuring proprietary modules which export symbols grandfather their taint.
The circumvention tactic used by Nvidia was to use symbol_get() to purposely swift through proprietary module symbols and completley bypass our traditional EXPORT_SYMBOL*() annotations and community agreed upon restrictions."
Back in 2020 when the original defense was added, NVIDIA recommended avoiding the Linux 5.9 for the time being.
The original article contains 476 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 63%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Phoronix thinks I’m using ad blocker. In fact I’m not. I don’t have any kind of adblocker on my network… *sigh*
Meanwhile me using ublock adblocker and flawlessly reading the content on firefox
Can someone ELI5 what this is about? Why does Nvidia wants to access parts if the Linux kernel and why are linux kernel maintainers against it? Wouldn’t it be good if Nvidia uses more open-source stuff?
Open source software is given with specific licenses. The Linux kernel is made of many smaller open-source components that each can have their own license. Some of the licenses used disallow the partial or full usage of the licensed software or components in proprietary settings, or in general given usage for specific cases only (in this case, the Nvidia driver using components they are not licensed to use.).
So what does that mean for me on Arch, how will it affect me?
ELI5?
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Yeah, you’re just running an entirely proprietary GPU that only Apple makes proprietary drivers for. Don’t see how that’s a win in any way?
Apple’s GPU at least isn’t maliciously designed to be difficult to write open-source drivers for. It’s up to the community to figure out how it works and write a driver, but Apple isn’t actively trying to stop them like NVIDIA is.
This is a fair point, and I’m not trying to defend NVIDIA’s behavior. I use an AMD GPU on Linux for a reason 😅
The progress on Asahi Linux has me considering a M1 MacBook Air for real.
The progress on Asahi Linux is a demonstration of the difference I mentioned. People have been working on open-source NVIDIA drivers for ages and still can’t get the GPU out of first gear, whereas the M1 GPU driver is mostly functional after only a couple of years.
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Apple reserves the sole and exclusive right to that privilege.
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It’s not that “Apple is bad” it’s that you’re commenting about how you’re glad that companies like Nvidia can’t fuck with you, while being seemingly oblivious to the fact that Apple absolutely can fuck with you because you’re running a proprietary OS using proprietary drivers on proprietary hardware. Apple has more power over you than Nvidia does over Linux users, yet you’re commenting here like Apple is a better choice.
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You specifically state that you’re glad that your CPU and GPU aren’t a vector for companies to fuck with you, but they are a vector for Apple to fuck with you. Apple just hasn’t done it (yet?)
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When did I write that Apple is bad? That’s a weird response.
Just installed the nvidia-driver for my 2080 SUPER and my system isn’t starting now. I’m using Debian 12.1 and after installing the driver, it crashes after entering in my password for my encrypted drive.
I will load up a Live USB and see if I can fix the issue. Any help would be appreciated!
Blacklist the Nvidia driver and un-blacklist nouveau. I’m going from memory, but I think if you can get to GRUB, you can append ‘single’ to your kernel parameters. That should get you into a system with minimal drivers loaded.
It’s sad to see the 100500th confrontation between the people who have never contributed to the kernel, yet they want to deprive others of using their existing GPU with Linux and instead force them to buy a new GPU. This screams of of being elitist and haughty but I just don’t care any longer. Too tired of hatred, aggression, animosity and verbal attacks. This has really propelled Linux, oh, wait, it’s only shown what kind of people represent Open Source.
Those “haughty” “elitists” wrote your operating system and gave it to you for free. Have some gratitude, and direct your complaints to the uncooperative scoundrels in charge of NVIDIA who created this whole problem.
Will someone please think of the mega corporation. 😢
Dude are you Avis from the phoronix forums¿? This comment is the exact copy of his/her comment there.
TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE & GPL Condom has to be intentional double entendre right?
