Long-Time Linux Nouveau Driver Chief Ben Skeggs Joins NVIDIA

[AleksandarK]

Ben Skeggs, a lead maintainer of the open-source NVIDIA GPU driver for Linux kernel called Nouveau, has joined NVIDIA. Working as an open-source contributor for the Nouveau driver for more than a decade, Ben Skeggs has achieved the remarkable feat of working to support the NVIDIA GPU hardware on open-source drivers. Before joining NVIDIA, Ben Skeggs worked at Red Hat up until September 18th of 2023. At that date, he posted that he was resigning from Red Hat and stepping back from the Nouveau open-source driver development. However, this news today comes as a bit of an interesting development, as Ben Skeggs is going to NVIDIA, which has been reluctant in the past to support open-source drivers.

Now, he is able to continue working on the driver directly from NVIDIA. He posted a set of 156 patches to the driver, affecting tens of thousands of lines of code. And he signed it all off from the official NVIDIA work address. This signals a potential turn in NVIDIA's approach to open-source software development, where the company might pay more attention to the movement and potentially hire more developers to support these projects. Back in 2012, NVIDIA had a different stance on open-source development, infamously provoking the creator of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds, to issue some snide remarks to the company. Hopefully, better days are ahead for the OSS world of driver development and collaboration with tech giants.



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[Panther_Seraphin]

Definately a possible sign of good news.......but there is always that caveat where nVidia will lock it behind closed source or a service contract or something stupid like GRID etc and make it useless in most use cases here.

 

[phanbuey]

Definately a possible sign of good news.......but there is always that caveat where nVidia will lock it behind closed source or a service contract or something stupid like GRID etc and make it useless in most use cases here.

Yeah it's for sure an AI cluster play or something equally non gaming/consumer related.

 

[evernessince]

Hoping that Nvidia is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts is beyond foolish. One need only look at their current behavior in the AI market and the decades of anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices in the GPU market to serve as a constant reminder that Nvidia will go to any length to advance their profits.

Tom Petersen, the guy who now works for Intel's Arc division, while working at Nvidia as a response to raising GameWorks criticism once said(and I'm paraphrasing) 'why would Nvidia ever work on software it's competitors can use'. People actually defended that BS back then and many in the cult would likely still defend it now. It's like people don't realize the downsides of proprietary software lock-in. It's also amazing how GN has 2 videos with Tom and all of a sudden he's a good guy. No, the guy will say whatever he's paid to say.

 

[remixedcat]

Really hope this don't end bad

 

[wurschti]

I'd speculate a Linux handheld may be incoming for NVIDIA, or just the fact that SteamOS got so many users in so little time, they are predicting a rise in Linux PCs and they want a big piece of that cake. Or maybe even Geforce Now transitioning to a Linux based system.

 

[tpuuser256]

Hoping that Nvidia is doing this out of the kindness of their hearts is beyond foolish. One need only look at their current behavior in the AI market and the decades of anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices in the GPU market to serve as a constant reminder that Nvidia will go to any length to advance their profits.

Tom Petersen, the guy who now works for Intel's Arc division, while working at Nvidia as a response to raising GameWorks criticism once said(and I'm paraphrasing) 'why would Nvidia ever work on software it's competitors can use'. People actually defended that BS back then and many in the cult would likely still defend it now. It's like people don't realize the downsides of proprietary software lock-in. It's also amazing how GN has 2 videos with Tom and all of a sudden he's a good guy. No, the guy will say whatever he's paid to say.

money is a means of survival in this society, nvidia shareholders are making decisions, for more profit of course

 

[cvaldes]

money is a means of survival in this society, nvidia shareholders are making decisions, for more profit of course

Look, it's silly to single out Nvidia here.

The primary responsibility of all publicly held companies is to increase shareholder value. Never forget that. And it doesn't matter if they're producing fast food, toilet paper, sneakers, or EUV lithography equipment.