You greatly underestimate amount of work that would be needed to hard fork and maintain Linux kernel (even powerhouse like Google doesn’t do it, and they’ve build multiple operating systems), in a state that would be attractive to AI, where you care a lot about performance, latest drivers (for thing like networking cards and other bleeding edge stuff that comes with AI gold rush).
And willingness of others to follow. NVIDIA needs Linux to sell their HW. For Linux NVIDIA isn’t even 1% of their market.
Possibly. But I think from the legal point of view it could be much more direct “I’m doing this to break the license” approach, where it can viewed as them try to freeload off up to date work. For older version they had some possible explanation that they just used an API.
And willingness of others to follow. NVIDIA needs Linux to sell their HW. For Linux NVIDIA isn’t even 1% of their market.