Ah ok, so it’s just the kernel part that they’re open sourcing, but a proprietary driver will still need to be installed just as before. I knew there had to be a catch.

I guess it’s nice that this would help with kernel issues, like graphics breaking when you install a new kernel. But still not quite what I was hoping for.

Is this really as good as it sounds? There’s some parts of the article that concern me:

The initial release targeted datacenter compute GPUs

Not every GPU is compatible with the open-source GPU kernel modules.

Is there any chance that this just means only a certain class of GPU’s are ever going to support open source, while their mainline desktop GPU’s will still be proprietary?

Not trying to spread FUD, but I don’t want to get too excited until I know for sure that this means they will support open source drivers on all their future desktop GPU’s.

This is actually more terrifying than you might have intended.

I’ve long thought that the greatest danger AI poses is going to be the “man behind the curtain” effect. If people can blame everything on AI then AI can be a blanket covering deliberate harm.

Imagine if government starts using AI for decision making. You could easily end up with a “man behind the curtain” who’s actually calling all the shots and just pretending it’s the AI doing it. Then you’d effectively have a dictatorship where nobody knows/believes they’re in a dictatorship.

You just wait and see. I’ll bet it goes all the way down to 96 and then they’ll really be sorry.