This is a great example of why you should never take advice from Anonymous Cowards.

No, it means that the lawyers are working on the case for free.

No, they made it worth 100 million usd. Fail at simple math much?

The reason NVIDIA originally started supporting Linux, and why the continue to do so, is simple, it does so to sell graphics cards to large 3d graphics, animations, video effects and similar studios. They are also happy to sell Tesla cards to the same for backend render farms. Nvidia contributed immensely to the use of Linux in DCC, something that it does not usually get any credit for.

This is the core segment of business in Linux for Nvidia, and why the drivers exist at all. Without DCC, Nvidia would not bother to consider Linux at all. On the other side of the coin, the people doing DCC need more than a driver - they need a full OpenGL implementation. One that is as fast and complete as as on other platforms. So how this really is step-by step (for NVIDIA) is:

1. Make OpenGL driver + library that runs on Linux and is as good as competition, but runs on cheaper hardware
2. Kill off Unix Workstations
3. Sell people more of your cards
4. Profit!
5. Sell people the next generation of your cards, making sure the driver + libraries combination is at least as good as any other platform provides
6. Profit!
7. Keep doing it and getting profit

But this only works if you have both the library and the driver. If you buy the card, you also buy the right to run software that ... makes rather expensive software you buy from Autodesk work. The fact that you can download the driver + library from the web and use it on a system that doesn't run any real 3d design software is simply Nvidia being nice.

Unfortunately, Slashdot seems to have degenerated to the point where few posters have a clear idea what they are posting about, never mind seeing the bigger picture.

No. What they mean is that using their driver + libraries, OpenGL programs will conistently give you the same results regardless if you used these on Linux, MacOSX or Windows. If you work on 3d design, animation or even shaders, this really matters. Same for Quadro using CAD users. And these are the people that make Nvidia money.

The parts of Linux community that really are Nvidia customers in a serious way are also dependent on the availablity of a complete, standards compliant openGL implementation, which means they not only depend on the Nvidia driver, but also the libraries, that Nvidia is not likely to support on top of anything except their driver.

Which in turn makes what Linus, and the rest of not-really-serious nvidia users running Linux thinks about the situation, utterly irrelevant.

Yeah, and what NZ would do in reply to that would simply free Dotcom and his assets, and the assets everywhere else that were hold would be freed on short order too, as the case just totally collapsed. And US government would have a pie on its face.

So I think its rather unlikely they will go that route.

Oh, you mean you are going to stop importing oil?

They are rather positive about this. Why would they not be?

Why do we keep getting these ridiculously over-sensationalised headings in story submissions? Can't we really rely on slashdot submitters to have two bits of brainpower needed to write a balanced heading when the original story is way overblown and uses an unnecessarily sensational headline?

Why is this crap on slashdot? Whats the relevance? Where is the news for nerds of some random corporate schmuck marrying?

Yesh, the poking in the brains of footballers part ;)

Excellent summary of the situation and the question that arises as a result.

Only if they then get tried and sentenced for homicide and be banned and prevented from having more children. And actually - no, even then it is a seriously bad idea. We should not knowingly let parents abuse their children in this way, just like we should not knowingly employ pedofiles in kindergartens.

Or if their neighbor's newborn dies due to it. It is not just the question of their own kid's health.