Re: how to continue with xserver-xorg-video-nv?
Hi Andy,
On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 01:58:22PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
> [Please Cc me on replies, I'm not subscribed]
>
> Hi,
>
> what is the plan to continue with this package? AFAICS, there are two
> options:
>
> 1. The maintainers are happy enough with this code, and think that it
> qualifies the DFSG. In this case, the bug report should be
> closed/downgraded.
> 2. We move xserver-xorg-video-nv to non-free, and xserver-xorg-video-all
> to contrib (the source for a contrib package can still be in main).
>
> IMHO, this is your call. What do you decide?
I'd like to tag this as etch-ignore if possible actually. I do believe it's
a problem for the reasons stated in the bug, but there's several obvious
issues with kicking it to non-free:
1) Nvidia users are forced to use non-free, at which point there's no
superficial distinction between nv and nvidia-glx, even though we know
in reality that there is a major difference in how Free those drivers
are.
2) We lose support for a major class of hardware out of the box that we
previously supported before.
Now, there is an option that I haven't explored yet, and that's that the
nouveau project[0] has begun cleaning up the nv driver a little bit by
deobfuscating the code as they go. This isn't complete yet, but it is being
done[1]. I could steal some of these patches and try to ship them in etch,
at which point the code will be partially deobfuscated. I have a strong
interest in shipping the nouveau driver if it's ready for etch+1 anyway, so
this bug will hopefully be resolved for the next release.
All this said, I do believe that the nv driver presents something that is
arguably non-free, and so the bug severity should remain as is. Given that
we want to give the GLX a pass for similar reasons (with similar efforts
for the future as well[2]) I think it's fairly reasonable to do the same
for nv. If we can't get this issue resolved for etch+1 though, we'll kick
it to non-free.
- David Nusinow
[0] http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
[1] See, for example,
http://gitweb.freedesktop.org/?p=nouveau/xf86-video-nouveau.git;a=commitdiff;h=17c871a44987af04d1688798e2e7802a5f5ba522
[2] If you're interested in this, ping me privately
Reply to: