[gNewSense-users] Re: gNewSense-users Digest, Vol 22, Issue 3

[Brian Kemp]

Hmm. I may be incorrect. I've read a few comments from others saying
that nouveau descends from the BeOS/Haiku 3d driver for Nvidia cards
instead of nv.

Either way it's reverse-engineered.

nv is fairly obfuscated:
http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/vga256/drivers/nv/?hideattic=0&only_with_tag=xf-3_3_3

In the long run, we'll have to wait for this to settle. In the short
run, don't use nVidia.



On Wed, Jul 2, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Brian Kemp <address@hidden> wrote:
> Sam:
>
> If bug 187 [1] is valid, we need to leave some nouveau components out
> (in the short term). That is likely to render the driver useless.
>
> I think one of the nouveau guys said at FOSDEM that the nv driver is
> really obfuscated and so arguably non-free as well. I don't know how
> that (should) affect gNewSense.
>
> So maybe Vesa is your only option in gNewSense, which isn't that bad on
> an LCD monitor if you don't need 3D.
>
> (To my knowledge, VGA is not a driver but a standard screen resolution.)
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> nv was obfuscated by nVidia a long time ago. The nouveau project went
> back through x.org's source control and found the pre-obfuscated code
> and un-obfuscated the nv code before starting their work.
>
> I'm fairly sure it's all reverse-engineered and not cribbed from some
> non-free driver source.
>
> I can't vouch for this as I didn't do it, but I'm fairly sure that's
> what I remember from reading up on nouveau.
>
> (Back to work.)
>