“The worst company to the open source” is a bold claim when there are thousands (millions?) of companies that don’t open source anything at all.

Last time I checked, Nvidia has quite a bit of open source software on GitHub.

Open sourcing something that you have developed and paid for(!) should always be at the discretion of those who did so.

It is fine if company not open sources its products. It is not fine when it actively resists the attempts to write open source for their products, like nouveau drivers for example.

How does it actively resist?

Did it send out C&D orders?

How can it actively resist when it has released at least some useful pieces of information?

They reluctantly provide signed firmware images, very often with significant delay.

Even if they didn't provide signed firmware, they wouldn't be actively resisting anything. Actively resisting would require them to take actions to block developers from creating an open source driver.

But as you admit: not only did they not actively resist, they actively helped out by providing something that they were under no obligation to provide.

I don't think you have a clear understanding of what "the worst" and "actively" means.

It's fine to be disappointed with a company deciding not to support open source in a way you'd like. But let's not go overboard with hyperbole? Have you ever complained about Microsoft not open sourcing the Office suite? About Oracle not open sourcing their crown jewels? About Apple not open sourcing iOS? About Broadcom not open sourcing the RPi drivers? And a million other companies, large and small, not open sourcing their money making products?

I wish the economics of the present were somewhat different, and that money didn't exist in the 21st century.

And yet, in the world we live in, I have a hard time faulting a corporation for not giving away their core products for free.

Well, for example, many other corporations have a friendlier stance to open source. It is not only about money and profits.

Nvidia, the worst company to the open source, has 127 open source repositories on GitHub.

Yeah, a bunch of little libraries and obscure experiments, while people want drivers. Repository counts don't mean anything. You need context.

So just look at their competitors. AMD and Intel both have many dedicated employees directly committing into Mesa. There are two open source implementations of Vulkan for Radeon GPUs, ffs. AMD is working on Radeon Open Compute to get all the code written against CUDA to work anywhere. There is no proprietary Linux driver for Intel GPUs. BTW even Broadcom and Qualcomm are supporting Mesa now. While nvidia uh.. was interested in nouveau on Tegra a little bit but is completely against nouveau on desktop.

> ... while people want drivers

And Nvidia has decided that it's not in their best interest to give away that IP for free. If they believe that their driver has secret sauce that gives then an competitive advantage, then that's entirely their prerogative.

> AMD is working on Radeon Open Compute to get all the code written against CUDA to work anywhere.

If you were in a position where your proprietary software fueled 90%+ of a highly profitable industry, would you open source it just for the good of humanity?

Of course AMD is trying to copy that and open source it: they don't have 90%+ market share to lose. It doesn't cost them anything to do so.

Cue the argument that these "don't count" because they use CUDA.

Flagging your comment. See guidelines.

"Please don't impute astroturfing or shillage. That degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about it, email us and we'll look at the data. "

Obviously, I have a bias coming into this discussion (and so do you).

Mine comes from experience in a world of hardware and physical products that gives me a greater affinity for the business model of hardware companies than "open source friendly" advertising giants. I have a fascination with the war of words free software adherents wage against nvidia - the company could give out candy to children and it would get criticized because Linus gave them the finger.

I'll also admit that I am entertained by the no true scotsman squirming that occurs when I point at things that nvidia has done that don't support the story that it is the evil empire.

You're on the right side of this argument but that doesn't mean you shouldn't answer the question.

He's under no such obligation. Unless you have hard proof it would be nice if you did not contribute to attempts to label people here as shills. See HN guidelines.

Ha, fair enough. I would like to argue but the relevant comment has been flagged, so I don't have the material to make a case, and I gracefully concede this point.

However while we're being HN etiquette pedants, the original comment clearly breaches this guideline:

> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

The original comment virtually embeds a confession that it is flame war material:

> Cue the argument that these "don't count" because they use CUDA.

I introduce this just to point out that a strict interpretation of the HN rules can stifle reasonable discussion.

Nvidia isn't just unfriendly towards open-source, their embedded division is unfriendly to anyone that isn't a large corporation involved in AI, self-driving cars and such applications. Good luck if you try to develop something else on the Jetson as a small-scale company and have to deal with device-specific bugs and driver issues.

Anyone registered in Nvidia developer program can file bugs. Did you filed yours and got ignored or something?