PledgeBank Everywhere
I’ll do it, but only if you’ll help

Pledge “nouveaudriver”

"I will pledge at least $10 USD towards the development of the open source nouveau driver for the nvidia card series but only if 1,000 other people will do the same."

— David Nielsen (contact)

Deadline to sign up by: 8^th February 2007
1,367 people signed up (367 over target)

More details
For the longest time nvidia have failed to provide specifications for their hardware or a working free accelerated 3d driver for inclusion with X.org. Thus leaving the many users of their videocards on popular UN*X systems such as Linux with only the option of using a 2d only driver or using nvidia' notorious proprietary driver.

With the advent of technological improvements to the underlying system to allow desktop effects this leaves a great number of users out in the cold. A project does exists to reverse engineer a driver for the existing nvidia cards, however this is a hard task which will require many man hours to complete. Thus the aim to present the Nouveau team with this no strings attached donation of at least $10.000 USD to further their nobel effort in developing this driver.

More information on the Nouveau driver project can be found here:
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/

Comments on this pledge

Because there are so many comments, only the most recent 50 are shown on this page.

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• Please read FSF.org, this is the reason people are donating. They want a free driver that is unencumbered and maintainable even if nvidia doesn't maintain it.
  joe, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Donando se crea el bien comun (bueno, para los que tengan tarjetas Nvidia y para el software libre), por un excelente proyecto, saludos.
  Christian Frausto Bernal, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
  Edmund Burke
  
  Sign me up! I've been using nVidia cards and the nv driver forever. Glad to have an opportunity to help improve it.
  Dan M Nalven, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Commercial vendors pay attention! There is money to be made from good open-source drivers. I would personally up to $50 for good open source drivers, that work on different platforms (PPC, x86, x86_64, Sparc etc.). The Alladin ghostscript suite has proven that you can make money if you GPL the source after six months, for instance. That may be a bit long for graphic cards, but say 3 months?
  Roland Nagtegaal, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Will the pledge continue to run until Feb 8? It is interesting to see how many people might still sign on. And if the nouveau people are reluctant to take the money, perhaps someone like Redhat with experience in professional Linux driver work could be approached.
  mjt, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Hi there,
  
  I have created a digg.com story for our amazing success.
  
  http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/10_000_Ra...
  
  Please digg the story so that this gets the publicity it deserves. Its an amazing accomplishment for a community of like minded individuals!
  Ciaran Mooney, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I mean to do some work on the nouveau driver of course.
  mjt, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• The pledge will run untill the 8th of Febuary as planned, I'll need a bit of time to organise with the Nouveau developers and people might as well be able to pledge in the meantime - You people caught me entirely by surprise, I went to bed with the knowledge that I had plenty of time to make such arrangements since we lacked +200 pledgers. Now less than 24 hours later we are nearly 200 pledgers over the goal.
  
  I'm in awe you guys - thank you for making my day. It really seems fitting to thank everyone, nearly 1200 pledgers as I type this, you made this possible not me. It's important to note that with the selfless pledging and the hard work of the Nouveau developers this would not ever have happened - it's due to your actions that this was possible and I wish I could thank everyone personally.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Huzzah! I say!
  Ciaran Mooney, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Larry: paying for an open source driver is actually a good investment - you may use the driver long after nVidia is gone and Linux is heavily rewritten, and maybe on an architecture nVidia never meant to support.
  random_idiot: you can do both. This pledge encourages people who would not donate otherwise.
  Lars Rune Nøstdal: you are welcome to pay nVidia, but please keep in mind that there is plenty of buggy Linux code written by people on salary with full documentation. Expect no guarantee.
  Pavel Roskin, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I just don't get all the negative comments here, me, I'd piss on a sparkplug if I thought it would do any thing to get a Free nVidia driver published.
  
  I don't care if I waste $10 on this, and all the world ever sees is a few drunken nuveau driver developers, as long as there is a chance that this will help I'm all for it.
  
  Has anyone asked nVidia how much they want to open source their driver?
  
  Even just open sourcing the nvidia code, while leaving out the third party code closed, would give an open source driver legs to stand on.
  Flemming Frandsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• uh... I'll donate an additional forty dollars if someone will fix the "save as" dialog in gnome. mean it. I'm lookin' for folders and they are like, 10% of the real estate and, oh, I digress...
  Kim Briggs, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I wrote up the formal offer to the Nouveau developers last night and sent it off. Information on how to get the money transferred is forth coming once the details have been arranged you will all get information.
  
  I know some of you are very eager to give money right away but please do not distract the Nouveau developers from their work, they have as much information on the specifics of donating as anyone else right now. I promise on my beloved aunts grave that once a method is settled and agreed upon you will be the first to know.
  
  The slashdotting caught me a bit by surprise and I was not properly prepared which is entirely my fault.
  
  That being said I am incredibly proud of every single one of you, you made this possible and nothing could make me happier than what has transpired over the past few months. Thank you.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Disappointed that Nvidia do not provide open source drivers
  wizened, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• there is an interview Stefan from the Nouveau on lugradio Season 4 Episode 10.
  
  http://lugradio.org/episodes/69
  ssam, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• ...And there is interview with David on 30th Linux Action Show: www.linuxactionshow.com
  sueisfine, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Hope that this works out for you, but everybody nowadays just reverse-engineers it, would like to see a good 3D system in Linux.
  globalwarming awareness2007, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• To the person who said "Reverse engineering is not a lasting solution IMHO."; I have to disagree. As one of the people who helped reverse engineered the CHM format, I've come to believe that reverse engineering is the *ONLY* solution in these situations. Create the future you want to see today with your own hands (or support someone else's efforts, this pledge rocks). Free drivers, free software today... tomorrow world peace!
  pabs, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I have read in the nouveau web that they don't accept money (http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FAQ#...)
  In despite of that, they will accept the money from this pledge and they are thinking how to invest it. But they said "the initiator of the pledge is working out the payment details and will let us know how to proceed". I want to know how to pay before supporting this pledge. Anyone knows?
  Juan Antonio, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• After much discussing with the lead developer we have settled on using paypal, we would have liked a neutral non-profit middle-man but every single we approached were either going under due to their own problems or were not interested in help us.
  
  I will be mailing the details to the pledge signups as soon as humanly possible.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• You might have already tried these org as the 'middle-man'
  
  FSF? Xorg?
  Sunnz, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Out of respect for those project I will decline to comment, I don't want any of those who declined to suffer negative feedback. But yes we have approached a number of such organizations without great success so in the interest of getting the pledge completed soon we will go for a PayPal solution.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I'm sorry but if you use Paypal, I wont/can't participate. Working with a trusted 3rd party as FSF was a good idea me thinks.
  Mats Huttunen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• You do realise that even if we worked with a 3rd party like the FSF, you'd still have to transfer your 10$ to them using something akin to PayPal. The current solution will mean donating directly to Stephane Marchesin, the lead developer, who will habor the money for the project on a real bank account.
  
  Bank to bank transfers are not an option since the international transfer fee for the 10$ donation normally is.. 10$.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• The FSF accept payments by PayPal or by credit card. The FSF Europe also accept payments by EU bank transfer (which is basically free inside the EU). Not that it is a problem for me of course, but if it is for others...
  Michael, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• The FSF might also be able to give advice regarding taxes, if you haven't looked at that yet. It would be a shame to see half of the donation going to the taxman.
  Michael, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Payments inside EU are not free for all and it takes a lot of time. EU bank transfers sucks, especially when you want to send $10, or any small amount, commission would be higher. That's why people use stuff like western union.
  
  Point for paypal.
  Blazej Zimnak, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• If the FSF were managing it, that would still be a choice of PayPal, credit card or EU bank transfer, which should be enough for most people. (Yes, you are right, the transfers are basically free inside the Euro zone, which is something quite different).
  
  As I said though, I can live with PayPal.
  Michael, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Perhaps another stupid idea:
  
  Perhaps every country/city can have a coordiator who collects the money together and go buy whatever equipment the team desires and send it off to them.
  Sunnz, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• when you announce the payment method would it be worth saying how much the tax and paypal fees would be, and suggesting that a donation of N dollars, would result in nouveau actually receiving $10. it would only a suggestion so people could still just send $10.
  sam, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I really hope this gets enough.
  gum, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Hi,
  
  Has there been a final decision yet david?
  
  Would be great if you could post the email address to send the money too.
  
  Ciaran
  Ciaran Mooney, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• What about contacting some friendly online shop(like Fluendo shop) so they set up a product called 'Nouveau 10$ donation' and I could make the donation just buying this product with my credit card. I would like to make the donation as easy as when I buy something online (I don't know what is needed for a PayPal account but I don't like it...)
  Other option, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• This fluendo shop seems like an excellent idea, beacuse it is tricky to keep a paypal account if you very rarely use it. I had one, but they disabled it because I used it only once and in the mean time forgot my password etc. Also I don't like to keep money in an account at paypal that I never use.
  On the other hand, how much trouble would it be for the fluendo shop? How would it work for them with taxes?
  
  Why is it still so bloody complicated in this day and age to make international money transfers?
  Roland Nagtegaal, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Please let us know when you have the payment details sorted out. I am anxious to get this obligation paid.
  David Cowell, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• > Please let us know when you have the
  > payment details sorted out. I am anxious
  > to get this obligation paid.
  
  The nouveau developers are still drawing up a plan for how they will use the money. They will publish it and let everyone know as soon as they are ready.
  Michael, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• ¿Se puede donar si uno quiere aunque ya se haya terminado el proceso de inscripción?.
  Jean Pierre Rupp, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Who do I pay the money to? I can't believe all this fuss about the payment method. Let the people with PayPal accounts pay that way and let the conscientious objectors find their own method.
  Iain Cheyne, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I think that the problem is not the payment method, but the fact that potentially, anything from a quarter to half the money might be liable for taxes if the thing is done wrong. See
  
  http://lovesunix.net/blog/?p=161
  
  When I asked the FSF if they could assist, they said that they were already discussing it with David, so hopefully this problem will be solved soon.
  Michael, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Okay I think I owe you all an update, I've been busy politely poking a bunch of non-profits to work with us. This has taken much longer than expected mostly due to many rejections and long waits on replies.
  
  However this will have the advantage of the donations being to a non-profit so Stephanes personal account won't get closed by the French banking authorities for suspected abuse, it will also mean advantagous taxing conditions so more of your generous donations will go to the developers.
  
  I'm happy to tell you all that the developers have agreed upon a solution and all we are waiting for is being formally accepted by that (yet unnamed) non-profit and then we can open the floodgates - I don't know how much longer this will take but as soon as I know something precise I will send out notifications.
  
  Thank you for your patience, this has taken much longer than I had ever expected but all is now back on track.. hopefully.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Yes. let's do it. My $10 are ready!!!!
  Elvin A. Serrano, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• The pledge says AT LEAST $10.
  
  Yup, I have $100AUD ready. :-)
  Sunnz, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I'm sorry but if you use Paypal, I wont/can't participate. Working with a trusted 3rd party as FSF was a good idea me thinks.
  bitje, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Hope they get it set soon. I have been checking my emails spam box just in case the info got routed there.
  Richard Gilson, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• What happened?
  Tom Bidwell, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• I'm agree. Let's do it.
  Augmentin, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Hello there,
  
  Still no instruction about how to participate yet ?
  Marc Dubrowski, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• The clearance process with the non-profit has taken longer than anticipated due to legal concerns (which should have been cleared up now). I profusely apologize for the lack of information but I am told that progress is being made and I promise that as soon as I know something I will issue an update.
  
  I'm hoping it will not take much longer.
  David Nielsen, 2 years ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Is this Dead?????
  tom bidwell, 18 months ago. Abusive? Report it!
• Still ready to donate.
  Jack Byer, 18 months ago. Abusive? Report it!