**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Sat Feb 06 02:59:58 2016 Feb 06 03:15:12 for Neo900 that's granted Feb 06 03:15:44 at least for the WLAN/BT module Feb 06 03:16:33 not so sure about the possibly augmented or improved config data for main camera that comes with maemo Feb 06 03:17:19 but then, the camera works without that, though probably not as good as with Feb 06 03:18:20 According to http://wiki.maemo.org/Fremantle_closed_packages the camera firmware is FOSS Feb 06 03:18:38 jonwil: your take on that is 100% identical to mine, however we can forget about any FSF certification Feb 06 03:20:17 The biggest negative in the mobile space is that probably 90% of modern mobile devices out there have GPUs where the only existing drivers are binary blobs Feb 06 03:20:23 since that's Free Software Foundation, not Free Gnu Linux Software Foundation Feb 06 03:21:43 yeah, however for OMAP's PowerVR afaik we can operate stuff with FOSS, though not the 3D acceleration part Feb 06 03:22:35 3D accel is another freely available redistributable blob Feb 06 03:23:08 I am surprised that one of the mobile GPU vendors hasn't seen the wisdom in following AMD and publishing all their specs and stuff Feb 06 03:23:32 AMD being more open has been nothing but good for GPU sales Feb 06 03:24:37 it took ages for AMD, and I think there were plans by some folks for doing same for PowerVR, however they also will need quite a while until they convince their bosses and lawyers etc Feb 06 03:25:30 wasn't MALI actually doing FOSS? Feb 06 03:25:49 Someone wrote an open source drive for ARM MALI but it wasn't official and was all reverse engineered work AFAIK Feb 06 03:25:55 or rather: ST-Ericsson Feb 06 03:26:49 I think if someone like ARM (with their MALI GPUs) wanted to be more open they would not only need to convince the bosses and lawyers at ARM but also convince everyone at the SoC makers who use MALI AND all the downstream device makers who build devices with MALI SoCs Feb 06 03:26:50 I actually tried to cionvince my colleague who managed that to rething a "(C) ST-Ericsson" in a .h file Feb 06 03:27:03 rethink* Feb 06 03:27:53 Someone like Samsung (who uses MALI GPUs in their Exynos SoCs) may not want open GPU drivers for the hardware Feb 06 03:27:58 check snowball(?) NovaThor Feb 06 03:28:50 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NovaThor Feb 06 03:31:33 alas they refused to relicense this one file and thus the MALI driver stuff probably wasn't accepted in mainstream Feb 06 03:32:43 Open source kernel stuff isn't very good unless its open source userspace as well Feb 06 03:33:03 And I have yet to see any open source userspace for MALI GPUs that wasn't reverse engineered Feb 06 03:39:36 I don't know, I debugged and fixed the hw drivers in NovaThor and had no time to think about 'linux' (actually Android) and MALI400 Feb 06 03:43:51 just a pity Nokia went south so NovaThor lost his biggest potential customer and shortly after got discontinued as well Feb 06 03:52:50 actually I fixed the drivers in Radium/Thorium chips, not the Nova AP Feb 06 23:02:45 DocScrutinizer05: the FSF considers many licenses perfectly free, not just GPL. (though GPL is usually preferred, as it helps to perpetuate freedom...) Feb 06 23:04:14 jonwil: actually free drivers are available for most Qualcomm chips, which makes like half of all mobile phones... (though considerably less on tablets) Feb 06 23:04:33 they are mostly reverse-engineered, but recently Qualcomm has actually been helping out Feb 06 23:05:23 Nvidia Tegra K1 and X1 (for tablets and the like) have official Nvidia-supplied free driver support Feb 06 23:06:18 a reverse-engineered free Vivante drivers seems to be progressing quite well Feb 06 23:06:39 Intersting that Qualcomm has decided to start being more open with its GPU drivers Feb 06 23:07:03 and even Imagination is apparently looking into free drivers for PowerVR -- they have been looking for people to work on them for quite some time... Feb 06 23:08:05 Mali is probably about the worst right now -- the reverse-engineered driver is stuck unfinished with no visible progress, and there are no sign whatsoever of ARM being interested in this Feb 06 23:09:04 BTW, there are rumours Samsung is working on their own GPU design... will be interesting to see how they handle it if it materialises. in general Samsung seems to be fairly open with low-level stuff (though not with actual products) Feb 06 23:09:43 I suspect PowerVR is considering it at the level of the technical people and stuff but they are having trouble convincing the legal and management people that being more open is a good idea. Feb 06 23:10:17 And they are probably also only considering it for their more recent GPUs and not the older stuff like what the Omap3 has (for example) Feb 06 23:11:41 well, if they are actually trying to hire someone for the position, I'm pretty sure it has passed legal/management Feb 06 23:12:34 as for support for old stuff, that's certainly true -- though once some code shows up for the current stuff, it should at least be easier to reverse-engineer the old stuff... Feb 06 23:15:13 but yeah it sounds like they want to write a new driver (and publish that) rather than either publishing their current driver code or publishing docs. **** ENDING LOGGING AT Sun Feb 07 02:59:58 2016