I don't really understand GPU drivers so might be getting the wrong idea here, but it seems as if maybe what they've been exploring is overly complicated ways to avoid having fully open source drivers in the straightforward way that some of their customers are beginning to demand.

Things could at least become more convenient for nvidia users even if not much closer to the ideals of free software.

A little explanation, there are two different types of drivers:

• Kernel Drivers: The low-level software that directly controls your Video card, managing essential functions like memory and power.

• User-space Drivers: The higher-level software that translates graphics commands from applications and games into instructions your video card can understand.

Here NVIDIA wants to kill the proprietary kernel driver and have the open source kernel included in the kernel by default. This means that the distros or you simply need to download the user-space binary blob driver without having to recompile the kernel driver every time the Nvidia drivers are updated.

I guess they want to replace nouveau with their own open source driver, until user installs proprietary driver.