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.

  •  𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏   ( @lemann@lemmy.one ) 
    217•10 months ago

    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

    •  Tetsuo   ( @Tetsuo@jlai.lu ) 
      54•10 months ago

      Just a perspective on why people would support NVIDIA here:

      • 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.

      • 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.

      •  Solar Bear   ( @bear@slrpnk.net ) English
        74•10 months ago

        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.

      •  BaconIsAVeg   ( @BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml ) English
        7•10 months ago

        Also, some of us are using Nvidia because we rely on software that doesn’t work on AMD. I really enjoy using Linux, but if it’s going to make my life difficult I’ll go back to using Windows with WSL.

        I agree Nvidia should resolve the licensing issues, but man GPL zealots get a such a raging hard-on for anything Nvidia related it’s funny to watch.

          •  BaconIsAVeg   ( @BaconIsAVeg@lemmy.ml ) English
            3•10 months ago

            3D rendering software using iRay. I’ve started trying to learn Blender, but I’ve still got thousands spent on assets and hardware which means I’m not going to run out tomorrow and pickup a new card. It all works fine under Wine, but the amount of Nvidia hate on here is just tiring.

            •  Zucca   ( @Zucca@sopuli.xyz ) 
              2•10 months ago

              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?

        •  LeFantome   ( @LeFantome@programming.dev ) 
          15•10 months ago

          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.

  •  intelati   ( @intelati@programming.dev ) 
    58•10 months ago

    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?

    •  eltimablo   ( @eltimablo@kbin.social ) 
      62•10 months ago

      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.

    •  Blackmist   ( @Blackmist@feddit.uk ) English
      20•10 months ago

      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.

    •  apt_install_coffee   ( @apt_install_coffee@lemmy.ml ) 
      16•10 months ago

      Likely a combination of 4 things:

      1. They have third party firmware in their blobs that they are under NDA regarding the source code.

      2. They believe in the source code is a large part of their success and don’t want to reveal it.

      3. They believe giving out the source code will allow many inferior variants of the software, impacting their brand.

      4. 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.

  •  Carlos Solís   ( @csolisr@communities.azkware.net ) English
    58•10 months ago

    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)

  •  Ertebolle   ( @Ertebolle@kbin.social ) 
    30•10 months ago

    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)

    •  Laser   ( @Laser@feddit.de ) 
      22•10 months ago

      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:

      1. The kernel includes IP only licensed under GPLv2.
      2. 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.
      3. Using these interfaces with a module not licensed GPLv2, you taint the kernel and violate the licensing.
      4. 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.

      •  poweruser   ( @poweruser@lemmy.sdf.org ) English
        4•10 months ago

        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

        •  yum13241   ( @yum13241@lemm.ee ) 
          1•10 months ago

          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.

  •  AutoTL;DR   ( @autotldr@lemmings.world ) BEnglish
    13•10 months ago

    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!

  •  Rayspekt   ( @Rayspekt@kbin.social ) 
    9•10 months ago

    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?

    •  SSUPII   ( @SSUPII@sopuli.xyz ) 
      17•10 months ago

      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.).

  •  librechad   ( @librechad@lemm.ee ) 
    7•10 months ago

    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!

  •  bankimu   ( @bankimu@lemm.ee ) 
    6•10 months ago

    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.