I guess this is Nvidia’s reaction to projects like ZLUDA.
And that’s a textbook case why monopolies are bad for pretty much everyone except the shareholders of that monopolistic company.
Is something like this actually enforceable? That’s like Microsoft saying you can’t use Wine on Linux.
Wine is done on clean room reverse engineering, it doesn’t use any propetriary code as reference. If they had done so, Microsoft would have grounds to sue them.
This can’t enforce anything on CUDA versions below 11.6; but any functionality introduced to CUDA after 11.6 needs to be clean room reverse engineered, so this will make ZLUDA development on those versions more difficult.
Yeah, Wine is very strict about this; IIRC if you’ve ever even looked at the leaked Windows XP source code, you’re not allowed to work on Wine.
Nowadays you cant do anything with the software or hardware you put and have on your pc.
If nvidia is going to go on a power trip, then please make that nvidia drivers is only allowed to get installed by nvidia servicemen before that the servicemen teaches the user about their 30 thousand page eula what and what they can do with THEIR bought hardware.
I read the article, and a few points stuck out to me:
- This has been a restriction since 2021; now it’s documented in the files and not just the online EULA (ie consistent)
- This is a protection to disallow other companies like Intel and AMD from profiting off of Nvidia’s work
- Nothing is stopping anybody from porting the software to other hardware, eg
Recompiling existing CUDA programs remains perfectly legal. To simplify this, both AMD and Intel have tools to port CUDA programs to their ROCm (1) and OpenAPI platforms, respectively.
I’m all for piracy and personal freedoms, but it doesn’t seem to be what this is about. It’s about combating other companies profiting off Nvidia’s work. Companies should be able to fight back against other companies (or countries).
I mean it’s not like Nvidia is unreasonably suing open-source projects into oblivion or anything, or subpoenaing websites for user data; at least, not yet.
Their motive is likely more profit but the result is an unjust restriction on user software freedom. It doesn’t matter if they make less money, maximising profit is not why we grant them copyright. Nvidia is often unreasonable, fuck off Nvidia.
maximising profit is not why we grant them copyright
That’s the only reason copyright exists. Because society decided that if you’re the one to put work into developing something, you should be the one reaping the profits, at least for some time.
Society in general has not granted this, it was corrupt lawmakers. Notice the distinction of maximizing profits, no one says no profits should be had at all. But I’m pretty sure most of the people don’t want companies to literally hold back progress of a whole field, of humanity in general just so their profits can be maximized. It’s only the ones directly benefitting from this that would want this, or if you’re brainwashed by those parties, otherwise you’re just against your own best interests (and of the rest of humanity) which is irrational.
Microsoft: “what do you mean, your PC?”
Maybe we should rent our video cards for $25 per month. You get 2,000,000 frames rendered per month and anything beyond that puts you in a pro gamer tier for more money.
heh, if ye had yer screen on 24/7 that would be merely 0.83 frames per second
The human eye can’t see more than 0.5 frames per second anyways (/s)
This feels illegal. Like it’s probably not, but it should be.
That’s the neat thing about being in the American oligarchs class. If it’s illegal just make it legal.
Cuda is the main reason Nvidia has their monopoly. Especially their artifiical limitations on VRAM for more expensive cards would make AMD a lot more interesting if AMD actually had good support.
I tried to read the article but i am too stupid. I think nvidia has a proprietary hardware/software combo that is very fast, but because they “own it” they want money; instead other companies are using this without paying… Am i close?
