--- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68
On Sat, Sep 10, 2016 at 9:07 PM, Josh Branning <[email protected]> wrote: > On 10/09/16 20:38, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >>> >>> See what Olimex has been doing for years then. >> >> >> you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping >> GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back >> around 2011/2012? you're also aware that with the sole exception of >> the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is >> auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the >> actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files? > > > I think this is a little unfair to Olimex and is at least partially untrue. > For instance, schematics and pcb files CAN be found, for most of their > boards. [1] yes - you're catching up (three people kindly pointed this out) > Unlike your boards, which give a 404 forbidden message when trying to access > the server. [2] Hopefully this is something you can correct. it has. explained also in other posts since you replied to this. > Though I can see that the advantage over the Olimex boards is that you ship > with a libre operating system from the start. which gives you a clear message: i will *not* compromise on software freedom for the purposes of profit maximisation. actually it's more specific than that: i will NOT put designs into people's hands when i know that they will become distressed as a result (due to viruses emptying their bank accounts, or being forced to spend money on throwing away perfectly good hardware due to software driver incompatibility and so on). > In regards to the A64 (used in the Olimex laptop), /mainline/ u-boot, from > the sunxi.org wiki [3]: u-boot is not the early bootloader. the early bootloader is proprietary. > ' Basic support for the A64 SoC has been been merged into 2016.05-rc1. > This covers UART, MMC and required GPIOs and clocks, but no Ethernet or USB > yet. Also as there is no information on the DRAM controller so far, the SPL > support is not enabled, so boot0 is required at the moment to get U-Boot > loaded. ... and is that early bootloader, boot0, proprietary or not, yes or no? > Also, I think that the Olimex laptop has not yet been released, so that > gives developers time to build more support, before they start selling. meanwhile, the opportunity has been totally lost, to put a financial "foot down" (just as with NextThingCo did with Allwinner over the R8) i.e. to say "no, allwinner, we will *not* place an order for 50,000 units with you *UNTIL* you give us the full source code including the full source code of the early bootloader, boot0" now the sunxi community is expected to pick up the pieces - unpaid - and to clean up allwinner's mess. oh, but worse than that, the team behind the Allwinner A64 think it's *OKAY* to consider boot0 to be proprietary! just because pine64 and olimex took your money instead of setting software freedom as a first priority. tell me: how is that okay? if you *really think* it is okay, explain how. l. _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.parabola.nu/mailman/listinfo/dev
