[Openchrome-users] VIA: Decent Drivers for Linux Petition (please help if you can)

[Karim Yaghmour]

Hello Forest,

Forest Bond wrote:
> There's also this:
> 
> http://www.alittletooquiet.net/text/a-license-for-the-via-vt6656-linux-driver/
> 
> In other words, VIA publishes the source for *some* drivers, and publishes
> reasonable licenses for only some of those.

That's interesting. It looks as though the source they're publishing comes
with no LICENSE file. But browsing the CVS tree from unichrome it looks
like it's got the same issue ... But I see your point. So it's as if one
can distribute the files one by one, but not the actual tarball ... weird :/

> Then there's also XvMC support in the way of a custom version of mplayer.  This,
> of course, isn't useful to anybody that's interested in keeping their software
> up-to-date, or anybody that's interested in using a different video player.  In
> fact, in practice, it's useful to very few people at all.  XvMC support belongs
> in the driver, and in a library, so all of the different players can use it.

No disagreement there.

> Why do they waste development dollars on projects that aren't of any value to
> the open-source community?  They could be getting some pay-off from these
> investments, but they choose not to (it would seem).

For me the reason is quite simple: their customers aren't the FLOSS community,
but rather the folks that buy the chips and put them in products (i.e.
hardware vendors.) For the latter, it really doesn't matter if the code
conforms to any OSS guidelines whatsoever. And if the chip is used in an
embedded application (say a PDA or something like that) then their approach
makes sense. In fact, for having worked with lots of chip manufacturers that
cater for the embedded space, VIA's "efforts" are actually much better than
others. No endorsement here, just a comparison.

>> The problem of course is that nobody should be doing this other than VIA.
> 
> Why?

It's just that I think it's the hardware manufacturers that should be
maintaining their own hardware. That being said, though, there have been
offers from some kernel developers to develop the drivers for the
manufacturers if they provided the specs. Maybe xorg needs to do the
same? I don't know the answer really.

Karim