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In the Linux kernel development community, Linus Torvalds has made strong statements on the issue of binary-only modules: "I refuse to even consider tying my hands over some binary-only module.
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Features like kernel mode-setting cannot be added to binary drivers by anyone but the vendors, which prevents their inclusion if the vendor lacks capacity or interest.
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īinary drivers often do not work with current versions of open-source software, and almost never support development snapshots of open-source software it is usually not directly possible for a developer to use Nvidia's or ATI's proprietary drivers with a development snapshot of an X server or a development snapshot of the Linux kernel. It is speculated that the bug has existed since 2004 Nvidia have denied this, asserting that the issue was only communicated to them in July 2006 and the 2004 bug was a bug in X.Org (not in Nvidia's driver).
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As part of a wider campaign against binary blobs, OpenBSD lead developer Theo de Raadt said that with a binary driver there is "no way to fix it when it breaks (and it will break)" when a product which relies on binary drivers is declared to be end-of-life by the manufacturer, it is effectively "broken forever." The project has also stated that binary drivers "hide bugs and workarounds for bugs", an observation which has been somewhat vindicated by flaws found in binary drivers (including an exploitable bug in Nvidia's 3D drivers discovered in October 2006 by Rapid7). There are objections to binary-only drivers based on copyright, security, reliability and development concerns. Therefore, the utility of such drivers is significantly reduced in comparison to free and open-source drivers. Solutions to bugs in the driver cannot be easily shared in the form of modified versions of the driver.
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This means that the code can be studied and altered for personal use, but the altered (and usually the original) source code cannot be freely distributed. In rare cases, a manufacturer's driver source code is available on the Internet without a free license. Based on this understanding, device drivers may be written and legally published under any software license.

When no technical documentation is available, an understanding of the underlying hardware is often gained by clean-room reverse engineering. These problems, which affect system stability, security and performance, are the main reason for the independent development of free and open-source drivers. Binary drivers used in the context of operating systems that are prone to ongoing development and change (such as Linux) create problems for end users and package maintainers.


The driver is made up of a compiler, a rendering API, and software which manages access to the graphics hardware.ĭrivers without freely (and legally) -available source code are commonly known as binary drivers. Most free and open-source graphics device drivers are developed by the Mesa project. They may also control output to the display if the display driver is part of the graphics hardware. Graphics device drivers are written for specific hardware to work within a specific operating system kernel and to support a range of APIs used by applications to access the graphics hardware. The rendered results are stored in a framebuffer, whose content is scanned by the display controller and sent to the screen.Ī free and open-source graphics device driver is a software stack which controls computer-graphics hardware and supports graphics-rendering application programming interfaces (APIs) and is released under a free and open-source software license. Data and instructions are sent to the GPU for processing.
