Question about “License For Customer Use of NVIDIA Software” for LINUX

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Good afternoon! Question is about licensed use of proprietary NVIDIA drivers. Us directed to turn here NVIDIA support.

We are small classroom (important to say that we aren’t school or university, we are private company, which provides education to the private persons by contract) in Blender for 8-15 remote workplaces.

At the moment we use exceptionally Linux and open-source software and open-source drivers. In order to increase productivity, we consider use of NVIDIA video card and proprietary Geforce driver for Linux.

Looking for a software solution we discovered VirtualGL for us - excellent, open source software. Thank to dcommander for provided help in answers earlier on GitHub about related questions.

The model of supposed work with use of the proprietary Geforce driver is following:

On the teacher’s computer (the property of our company) is set Linux, VirtualGL and proprietary NVIDIA driver. On the computers, which are provided to students (the property of our company), are set Linux, VirtualGL.

Our students at the same time connect (vglconnect) to the created on the computer accounts and launch (vglrun) the Blender programme, in which we teach them.

In licensed agreement «License For Customer Use of NVIDIA Software» for Linux on driver 440.x is said:

2.1 … non-transferable right to use the SOFTWARE …

2.1.2 Linux/FreeBSD Exception … Notwithstanding the foregoing terms of Section 2.1.1, SOFTWARE designed exclusively for use on the Linux or FreeBSD operating systems … may be copied and redistributed ….

Questions:

What kind of use will be considered “transfer of rights on use of SOFTWARE” and, accordingly, a violation? Will be our described example of possible use a violation? We don’t want to violate – if it’s possible, please explain in more detail if it can be applied to example of use described by us that we can make a choiсe.

Does it work «2.1.2 Linux/FreeBSD Exception» in frames of our described use?

If we understand correctly – the teacher’s computer acts in the role of a conditional “server” (giving out to student/client the result) and there is no direct transfer of rights on use and no a prohibition on “DataCenter” in Linux license on the NVIDIA drivers.

Thank you!

2

Hello aleksanderrr, I checked with our lawyers, and they are okay with your intended use.

Thanks,
Andy Ritger
NVIDIA Corporation

3

Good afternoon.

Thank you for your answer, it opens for our small classroom a lot of new in the world of 3D modeling together with NVIDIA.

Here in our question about students connection to the computer we missed the word “teacher’s”. Even if it is logical that in our question students connect (vglconnect) to the teacher’s computer, I want to be sure that we correctly understood your answer in the frame of our question.

“Our students at the same time connect (vglconnect) to the created on the teacher’s computer accounts” – and this use don’t violate terms of “License For Customer Use of NVIDIA Software”.

Thank you.

4

Thanks for clarifying. Yes, that was understood.