[smcameron]

No, every gpu vendor out there would prefer proprietary drivers and with a stable ABI, they could do it, and would do, there is no question about it.

I worked for HP on storage drivers for a decade or so, and had their been a stable ABI, HP would have shipped proprietary storage drivers for everything. Even without a stable ABI, they shipped proprietary drivers at considerable effort, compiling for myriad different distro kernels. It was a nightmare, and good thing too, or there wouldn't be any open source drivers.

[charcircuit]

I never said they wouldn't. Having more and better drivers is a good thing for Linux users. It's okay for proprietary drivers to exist. The kernel isn't meant to be a vehicle to push the free software agenda.