On 28 August 2014 13:57, Luc Verhaegen <l...@skynet.be> wrote: > On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 10:07:46AM +0300, Simos Xenitellis wrote: >> It is indeed bad blood. Let's see a few: >> >> 1. "*Allwinner <http://linux-sunxi.org/Allwinner> does not actively >> participate in or support this community. In fact, it is violating the >> GPLv2 license <http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations> in several ways and >> has so far not shown willingness to resolve this."* >> Source: http://linux-sunxi.org/Main_Page (it is in bold, on the first page >> of the Wiki!) > > Allwinner never has participated or supported this community so far. It
This is simply not true. Allwinner has provided devboards and probably some docs and sources upon request. Of course, there is much left to be desired. Still this sentence alone is false. > hadn't even shown the slightest signs of wanting to change this when > that message was put up. And now that we got a few email addresses, it > cannot be said that things have fundamentally improved, and that the > above has become invalid. > > Allwinner is very much violating the GPL, and that is a cold hard fact. > What is more, over the years, and people have been talking about this > since early 2012, they have not shown any willingness to resolve this. > Only this week did i get one statement that someone "will follow up", > for whatever that means, as i haven't seen anything solid yet. As you might be aware they depend on the suppliers of the IP to provide the drivers or documentation. In the industry GPL violation is the standard. Often it is resolved not by opening the driver but by making a properly licensed glue. As has been seen with Mali this can somewhat help with porting as you can port the glue to newer kernel and reuse the blob but it does not provide much advantage for writing proper drivers. So by enforcing GPL you might get something that adheres to the letter of copyright laws and licenses but does not help you at all. You could argue that they could get IP for which sanely licensed driver or documentation is available but then again if you do have cost-effective providers of such IP please point them out. I can't tell much about the AW's willingness (or lack of) to resolve the GPL issues but they are certainly not in the position in which resolving the issues is simple. So please stop attacking AW in this way. Thanks Michal -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "linux-sunxi" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to linux-sunxi+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
