Courts in Germany have ruled that you can not add additional clauses to a contract after the contract has been signed, e.g. the purchase has been made.

So unless Hetzner is buying directly from nvidia, nvidia has no way to enforce such a clause. And when I buy a nvidia card at any retailer in Germany, I will not have to sign a contract that obligates me to not use it in a data center - heck I can just take the box off the shelf and pay in cash without having to sign anything.

So anything they put into the EULA is void as it is only known after the time of purchase.

It's so good to hear when a legal system gets things right for consumers.

probably just ignore it, they are unenforceable in the EU afaik (which is a good thing - if I buy a piece of hardware, I will do what I want with it).

They don't install drivers into servers, you have to do it by yourself. EULA attached to drivers, not hardware

I've read somewhere (maybe in HN comments) that these kinds of clauses can not be enforced in EU. Hetzner operates out of Germany.

Yes, I wonder how sure HN is about this however!

1080s are much harder to buy now, perhaps its taking time to find and qualify 2080s

They use older cards without the restrictions.

The EULA is attached up the drivers. Newer versions of CUDA often require newer drivers, so you bump into the issue regardless of when you buy the GPU.

From what I see, first news about that EULA change is from end of 2017, so far before current gen cards were introduced