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nvidia-patch
This patch removes restriction on maximum number of simultaneous NVENC video encoding sessions imposed by Nvidia to consumer-grade GPUs.
> They could open-source their drivers and use the GPL symbols, of course, but unlike AMD or Intel I doubt they're going to do that.
They already have, but their open modules only work on newer cards. https://github.com/nvidia/open-gpu-kernel-modules.
> Linux's license is GPLv2 plus a syscall exception.
Did Linus really sought to have every contributor of Linux that licensed their contribution as GPLv2 agree to this specific exception, and relicense it as GPLv2 plus syscall exception? This sounds unbelievable.
When one checks the wording of the "exception", https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/LICENSES/excep... it says
> NOTE! This copyright does not cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does not fall under the heading of "derived work".
This just seems like a legal opinion of Linus that states that userland programs are not derivative from the kernel (and thus don't need to), but this is kind of obvious and expected, right? I mean, userland Windows programs aren't derivative from Windows either, or macOS programs, or etc.
Also: at the moment Linux was created, all Linux programs were originally made for other operating systems. Programs like bash and gcc predate Linux. They couldn't be derivative works of the kernel, even if they wanted to, because the kernel didn't exist when they were created.
I highly doubt that any kernel developer could successfully sue authors of userland programs for copyright infringement, regardless of what Linus thinks about it. So this isn't really an exception of the GPLv2 but just a _clarification_ that the wording of the GPLv2 shouldn't be interpreted in a way to make userland programs infringing (because they aren't, and wouldn't be even if Linus didn't clarify)
> CUDA, and pretty much all optimization(hacks) done to run games better
And arbitrary limitations implemented at the driver level to force you to purchase their enterprise GPUs, see https://github.com/keylase/nvidia-patch#nvenc-and-nvfbc-patc...