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Comment by anniely | Hacker News Reader

The "2009" license is the correct license. If you try to download a GeForce driver from NVIDIA's website today, that is the license that you must accept before in order to download the driver.

On Windows, it's also the license you must accept during installation time before you can use the driver, even if you did not accept it during your download.

Interestingly, the license inside the Linux package does not include the data centre clause at this point in time.

https://www.geforce.com/drivers/license/geforce

http://www.nvidia.com/content/DriverDownload-March2009/licen...

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I went to https://www.geforce.com/drivers and searched for 1060 on Linux.

Then clicked through to https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/126577. This page has the standard "*By clicking the "Agree & Download" button, you are confirming that you have read and agree to be bound by the License For Customer Use of NVIDIA Software..." That sentence links to the EULA that I linked to.

EDIT: Alright, it matters which site you download the driver from. See the edit to my original comment.

Try downloading drivers for a Titan V - it goes to that very specific 2009 license (complete with the absurd exception for the blockchain). This is very specific and targeted at crushing small system vendors who were selling to scientists across many domains who preferred GeForce over Tesla because of the huge price difference. They have already pursued vendors and they have tried to shut them down. If you don't believe me or you're OK with that behavior, be my guest to continue enabling it.

I just tried for Titan V on Linux through geforce.com and got a EULA without this clause. Downloading through nvidia.com probably gets the no data center EULA.

Windows 64 got me the datacenter-limiting license, Ubuntu 16.04 as well. No idea how you're getting past this:

"2.1.3 Limitations.

    No Modification or Reverse Engineering. Customer may not modify (except as provided in Section 2.1.2), reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble the SOFTWARE, nor attempt in any other manner to obtain the source code.

    No Separation of Components. The SOFTWARE is licensed as a single product. Its component parts may not be separated for use on more than one computer, nor otherwise used separately from the other parts.

    No Sublicensing or Distribution. Customer may not sell, rent, sublicense, distribute or transfer the SOFTWARE; or use the SOFTWARE for public performance or broadcast; or provide commercial hosting services with the SOFTWARE.

    No Datacenter Deployment. The SOFTWARE is not licensed for datacenter deployment, except that blockchain processing in a datacenter is permitted.

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