[auanfaz]

>patents and other things will still protect their IP / featuresets even if they open it....

That's not how it works. Even if you patent something others can copy it (and I don't mean just the source, but the idea, algorithm, implementation) and use it in their products and then you're left with the work of completely reverse engineer them, figure it all out, then sue them, etc.

So you can either do that or just never open your source. Who can blame them?

[franga2000]

> and then you're left with the work of completely reverse engineer them, figure it all out, then sue them, etc. That isn't that difficult if your competitors also make their drivers open source. There is no doubt in my mind, that nvidia already has a team looking at every commit AMD and Intel make to their Linux drivers. If one of them started using their IP, nvidia would know.

[auanfaz]

The performance of the AMD drivers on Linux is much lower than on Windows, so it goes without saying that the spicy parts are still closed source.