> Look at how Nvidia already locks nouveau developers out of using their GPUs' full power with cryptography.

The problem is not cryptography, the problem is copyright.

Nouveau could in theory upload the signed firmware blob from a legitimate driver to the GPU and build an interface to communicate with it. The problem is, the legitimate driver package prohibits any kind of modification outside the intended purpose, which means it's questionable if building and redistributing a tool to extract the firmware blob out of a driver package is legal, and it's certainly not legal to redistribute that extracted blob.

Here in Europe, at least the building and distribution of the tool as well as the act of the user to download the legitimate driver package, extract and use the blob should be legal, but that doesn't help if the developers of the project are outside of the EU :(

Maybe "full potential" could have multiple meanings. For example, one user might focus on hardware performance^1 while another might focus on hardware flexibility. Freedom, doing whatever it is they wish with the hardware they have purchased.

1. Only applicable to an "approved use" of the hardware.

There are already non mainstream OEMs you can buy hardware from that won't have this problem. System76, entroware, Purism (laptops+smartphones), Frame.Work (not only Linux laptops) and other Linux manufacturers are there to serve you. On the mobile space there is Purism, Pine64 and FairPhone. In our dystopian future, if you want ownership of a computing device you 'll need buy a nieche one.

Well, I haven’t used Windows since 2002. I’ve been fine with my hardware speeds so far.

This is clearly a service problem that justifies sailing the high seas.

I agree for games. They can be made extremely difficult to crack.

Videos are easy to though.