Not sure I'm able to follow your logic here, esp regarding "quickly render Linux useless" and "losing a lot of corporate seats".

Linux is extremely pervasive by now: embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, super computers. Let's say NVIDIA boycotted Linux on account of the GPL. No more NVIDIA for Linux-based embedded systems, phones, laptops/desktops, servers, supercomputers. What then?

It certainly wouldn't make a dent in the embedded space, where NVIDIA hardly has any presence at all, even if you do include NVIDIA Shield. On the phone side, how many of the 1+ billion Android devices use NVIDIA chips? 1 million? 2?. It certainly wouldn't make a dent in the server space -- the market for GPGPUs on regular servers is rather tiny. In the supercomputing space, there's a trend towards more GPGPU capabilities, so here it might actually make a difference for some. Still, seems somewhat unlikely that lack of NVIDIA support would "quickly render Linux useless" as a supercomputing OS...

That leaves the laptop/desktop space. Linux has around 2% market share on the laptops/desktops. Most people in that space who need rock-solid 3D performance for CAD/CAM work are already using Windows. Sure, there are still die-hard NVIDIA Linux users left, even after everyone decided to transition to MacBooks and OSX for development, but their number hardly qualify as "lots of corporate seats".

All of that being said, I'd love for additional uptake of the *BSDs, in addition to the ~30 million PS4s running FreeBSD :)

Most independent people who need 3D performance for CAD might be using Windows, but the VFX industry need 3D performance on the desktop and they heavily use Linux and NVIDIA (at least at the high level). AMD is almost nowhere to be found - it's all CUDA (for any GPU compute stuff) and NVIDIA's drivers.

Losing the market leader for GPUs at a time when accelerators have almost become mainstream absolutely massive.

Sure it might not be the end of the world for many existing applications but think of the new/growing growing markets they basically control right now - deep neural networks, car automation, photorealistic offline rendering, accelerated simulation, accelerated HPC, gaming etc.

With the interest and demand from all those and potentially other segments like say Android could be enough to push BSD ahead of Linux in a few years and be absolutely crippling for the future prospects of Linux.

It'd basically be like GCC vs Clang all over again.

> It certainly wouldn't make a dent in the embedded space

The embedded space follows Linux because their alternative desktop was Linux (if it wasn't Windows).

You assume that a GPL slapfight only takes out nVidia. It would take out lots of people who have binary-only drivers who currently make Linux their home. The WiFi manufacturers being some of the most important ones.

And that WOULD impact embedded Linux very much.

> However, the GPL lawyers don't want to press the point too hard as they could easily lose a lot of hardware that would quickly render Linux useless.

Hyperbole aside about how Linux would be useless without nvidia blobs, the situation with nvidia is not about a mere GPL wrapper. The nvidia blob is using parts of the Linux API for which the Linux API explicitly declares "there's no GPL here". This declaration is enforced via C macros.

Why is it so important to protect proprietary software companies that infringe on other's copyright?

I think his point is that if the nvidia company felt threatened by Linux, then they would immediately stop producing for Linux. In which case the Linux ecosystem would shrink, and the platform would become less useful.

Would this actually happen? Would it effect Linuxes popularity? That's harder to predict.

They're already not producing for Linux, though; they're producing for themselves and flouting the GPL to expand their market.

Are they really flouting the GPL though? I think you could make a better case that SteamOS is, with an integrated Nvidia driver.

What makes this different IMO from VMWare is that they are not creating a work that exists purely b/c of Linux, instead they a making a piece of software that allows their hardware to work with a Linux based machine.

I think those are two very different types GPL violation. One really does flout the GPL and exploit Linux kernel devs, the other I think is generally viewed as an enhancement to Linux, thus less interest in fighting it.

They're flouting the GPL in the sense that they produced a binary-only driver enabled by a compatibility layer released under GPL that, in my uninformed opinion, probably violates the GPL. It still doesn't do me any good, though; I'm on my second laptop with Optimus graphics, and they're just not going to make their hardware work on this machine when it's not running Windows. Fortunately, I only need 3D acceleration when I'm gaming, and the machine came with a Windows license, so dual-booting is an option for me.

Leaving aside the fact that this isn't really settled legal theory...

Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence.

Linux could disappear tomorrow, and there are plenty of free Unix-like alternatives that easily fill the void.

If nVidia disappeared tomorrow, there are lots of Linux contracts that would simply stop (and most likely switch to Windows).

Now, you can argue ideologically, but part of the reason why Linux is popular stems from the fact that Linus was more pragmatic about licensing rather than RMS' dogmatism.

If you want to see what a world with a strictly enforced GPL without modules looks like, look at the device support for OpenBSD. A lot of Linux folks would be very upset being limited to that set of peripherals.

> Linux would be hurt more by nVidia's absence than nVidia would be hurt by Linux's absence.

Maybe for the desktop, but not overall: Nvidia is heavily pushing supercomputing/machine learning and it can't afford to ignore Linux in this space (since Linux dominates).

If Nvidia were to abandon Linux, they would be gifting AMD a free come-back opportunity.

What if Nvidia provided good ⋆BSD drivers? According to the answers from Greg Lindahl and Eugene Miya on Quora to the question "Why is the OS landscape of Supercomputers dominated by Linux instead of BSD?" [1] the Linux dominance is largely an historical oddity rather than due to some inherent superiority of Linux.

If for some reason supercomputer builders could no longer use the best GPUs in supercomputers, would they stick with Linux or would they follow the hardware and switch to a ⋆BSD on the compute nodes?

[1] http://qr.ae/RUortF

>If for some reason supercomputer builders could no longer use the best GPUs in supercomputers, would they stick with Linux or would they follow the hardware and switch to a ⋆BSD on the compute nodes?

I have no idea what the answer would be, but my guess is it would hinge on 1) AMDs reaction, and the performance hit (if any) of switching to AMD GPUs on Linux and 2) the performance hit (if any) of switching the OS to *BSD

NVIDIA does produces drivers for FreeBSD[1]. I don't know if they're considered "good" or not, but they definitely aim to have the same features and quality as on Linux.

[1] http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

I think you vastly underestimate how far those guys would go to eek out every last bit of practical performance.

Going with second rate option simply doesnt work when you're spending hundreds of millions per machine on the high end.

I mean do you really think it told really be easier to port a thousand heavily optimized applications/libs CUDA to OpenCL than the handfull of librsties that dont alrady work with BSD from Linux?!