[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
Many of you say video is not important its so wrong ... Video is the most important ... commercial wise For your knowledge only chinese Tronsmart brand sold more than 100k devices based on A80 sun9i platform under Draco brand boxes ... i don't want to mention all other brands that sold same platform boxes ... some of the end user buyers want to stick to android but many of them would like to go Ubuntu , Debian OSMC , Openelec linux Kodi etc etc... with desktop with vpu gpu hardware acceleration. Nobody can argue against the consumers just because they are the one who bring the profit to companies as Allwinner. Why not fixing the video vpu gpu issues of Allwinner SoC's first ? I am supporting Luc at least from this point of view. -- 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.
[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
@Allwinner staff guys where is the A80 vpu / gpu hardware acceleration in linux / ubuntu / kodi? I sugest you to hire Luc Verhaegen if you guys are not able to provide this A80 linux vp/gpu hardware accelerated support. The end users from freaktab forum and tronsmart forum keep waiting to see this happen. Do you really want us the end users to boycott your Allwinner products? -- 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.
[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 3:55:25 AM UTC, Luc Verhaegen wrote: This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change. Luc Verhaegen. I'd be curious where all the law practitioners stand it this. Chinese earned their bad reputation by hard work, by stealing intellectual but not only properties. It's not a prejudice that everybody dislike them, those who do have a valid reason. Again, I'm curious, I mean, we get to see all this lawyers and their petty quarrels over billions of dollars all over in popular media.. those vs this vs them vs that vs slide button, etc. Personally I'd love to see AllWinner gets their products !banned for instance in the whole US. Would this not help? -- 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.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
fre 2015-02-27 klockan 00:04 -0800 skrev pelj...@gmail.com: Personally I'd love to see AllWinner gets their products !banned for instance in the whole US. Would this not help? The western world is a relatively small market for Allwinner. Their main market is China and related countries. Regards Henrik -- 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.
[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
I think they couldn't post the source code because is not easy as we presume. Their hardware are rip off of other hardware implementations. So if they release the source code, the hardware companies can sue them. And it is a more serious business than a gpl violation bothering some few angry developers. I hope I'm wrong. Em quarta-feira, 25 de fevereiro de 2015 00:55:25 UTC-3, Luc Verhaegen escreveu: This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change. Luc Verhaegen. -- 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.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
Interesting point. Well, we are in the same boat as Jon Smirl point it out. Is easy to fall in love with the initial specs,price and capabilities, but in our particular case with the A80, we have +1 year since the announcement and over half year since first SDK release. We were able to fix some issues with the encoders, particularly with the VP8 with elemental binary assembler edit and some high level workarounds, but it's not a clean and efficient solution. Few days ago we start working with OpenCL and PVR with no luck at the moment. On these conditions, It's hard to work and easy to lose focus from our main objective: to buy the A80 SoCs for manufacturing and sell the product. I agree and understand the open/close source survival approach, competitors are everywhere seducing developers like us with specs all the time. When you get in, you find the issues, and no SoCs manufacture is sinless. From another point of view, and please do not consider it as my only point of view, we need to consider a new technology reality, very different from 90's and 00's: Allwinner and other high tech companies from China can expand only with their local market. They don't really need a big portion of the high competitive tech world, they are 1/3 of the world. Good or bad, we can ask for help and say thank you if we accept to work with them and their philosophy approach. At the time of this writing, only 7 developers access the code published 2 days ago on Github. No libraries related with VP8 are included. We don't reach the point to explore other SoC alternatives yet as Smirl describe. We are taking the risk for a little more time, probably because the true intention to fix the issues from Allwinner, the sunxi community and the Allwinner technical and commercial advantages. On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 8:03:27 AM UTC-5, Jon Smirl wrote: On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 1:06 AM, ke...@allwinnertech.com javascript: ke...@allwinnertech.com javascript: wrote: Hi, Luc, Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx. We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. And just close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is opensource. We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We are trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us know, we will fix it and update it ASAP. About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the code to open some drivers. Kevin, there are advantages to being open source. For example my company tried using the A20 for a product two years ago. We spent a lot of effort developing it and never could get the video compression working the way we needed it to work. I sent several bugs into Allwinner which got fixed, but the fixes came back about eight months after I had sent the problems in. That was far too late to save our project. Since we couldn't get the A20 version of the product going we finally gave up and switched to a different CPU vendor. All of this messing around probably cost us $250,000. Plus we are paying more for the new CPU. But the new one works correctly, which is the most important point. If I had the source to the compression code I probably could have fixed it myself and sent out a patch. Or maybe I could have inserted debug printouts and narrowed the problem down to a very specific bug report which would have made it easy for you to fix. Instead I was just stuck using a black box which didn't always do the right thing and I had no ability to fix. We finally gave up and switched CPUs. Being open source allows other people to help you improve the code. There are a lot of highly skilled programmers working on Linux. When shipping their products is dependent on getting Allwinner code fixed, they will go in and fix bugs if they have the source code. They will also send you these fixes since they want them incorporated into the official releases. On another topic - kernel drivers. Closed source, out of tree kernel drivers are a security nightmare. Consider what happens when a security bug is found in the Linux kernel. The bug is disclosed and a fix is issued. For vendors on mainline they can quickly incorporate these patches and send our dynamic updates out to their products. But what about closed drivers? It is easy to crack into old kernels. The instructions on how to do it are included in the security vulnerability disclosure. Closed drivers prevent me from applying these security patches and moving onto a newer kernel. Instead I have to wait until Allwinner decides to update their kernels - which may be years. This attack method is used a lot in the wild. It is how the first attack against Sony was done (not the current one). They were running three year old kernels on their servers. Somebody just looked up the
[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
Makes me jokingly wonder why Linus himself hasn't given AW the finger yet. He did so when he expressed his disgust with Nvidia's way of dealing with the open-source community; not sure if it accounted for the company eventually cooperating, but it sounded like a swift kick in the behind. On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 11:55:25 AM UTC+8, Luc Verhaegen wrote: This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change. Luc Verhaegen. -- 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.
[linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
Now, with all due respect to AW, and I didn't mean to be rude, but they wouldn't be subjected to so much scorn if they, as Luc put it, would just learn to play by the rules. It ain't as simple, I know. but people wouldn't look after someone if it wasn't for them doing what's reasonable and good, right? On Wednesday, February 25, 2015 at 11:55:25 AM UTC+8, Luc Verhaegen wrote: This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change. Luc Verhaegen. -- 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.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
Hi, On Wed, 25 Feb 2015 14:06:59 +0800 ke...@allwinnertech.com ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote: Hi, Luc, Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx. That is the right thing, and thank you for this statement. We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. And just close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is Why is close? Please open the code of Video Engine hardware. If allwinner still isn't aware. The Video Engine hardware was successful reversed engineering more that 1 year already. With the result been the fantastic 100% open source libvdpau-sunxi implementation. http://linux-sunxi.org/VE_Register_guide There isn't anything to hide. Allwinner only has to win by publising more open information about the video engine hardware. By the means of open source code, or any form of hardware documentation. I, as one of the Video Engine hardware reverse engineering developers that wishes to have a proper 100% open source mainlined kernel driver. Ask cooperation from allwinner. Thanks. Manuel Braga opensource. We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We are trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us know, we will fix it and update it ASAP. About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the code to open some drivers. Thanks. Best Regards. ke...@allwinnertech.com From: Luc Verhaegenmailto:l...@skynet.be Date: 2015-02-25 11:55 To: linux-sunxi@googlegroups.commailto:linux-sunxi@googlegroups.com CC: Meng Zhangmailto:ke...@allwinnertech.com; sh...@allwinnertech.commailto:sh...@allwinnertech.com Subject: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof. This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem utterly incapable of or unwilling to change. Luc Verhaegen. NOTICE: This e-mail and any included attachments are intended only for the sole use of named and intended recipient (s) only. If you are the named and intended recipient, please note that the information contained in this email and its embedded files are confidential and privileged. If you are neither the intended nor named recipient, you are hereby notified that any unauthorized review, use, disclosure, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or any of its contents, is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender and destroy the original message and all your records of this message (whether electronic or otherwise). Furthermore, you should not disclose to any other person, use, copy or disseminate the contents of this e-mail and/or the documents accompanying it. -- -- 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.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 1:06 AM, ke...@allwinnertech.com ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote: Hi, Luc, Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx. We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. And just close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is opensource. We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We are trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us know, we will fix it and update it ASAP. About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the code to open some drivers. Kevin, there are advantages to being open source. For example my company tried using the A20 for a product two years ago. We spent a lot of effort developing it and never could get the video compression working the way we needed it to work. I sent several bugs into Allwinner which got fixed, but the fixes came back about eight months after I had sent the problems in. That was far too late to save our project. Since we couldn't get the A20 version of the product going we finally gave up and switched to a different CPU vendor. All of this messing around probably cost us $250,000. Plus we are paying more for the new CPU. But the new one works correctly, which is the most important point. If I had the source to the compression code I probably could have fixed it myself and sent out a patch. Or maybe I could have inserted debug printouts and narrowed the problem down to a very specific bug report which would have made it easy for you to fix. Instead I was just stuck using a black box which didn't always do the right thing and I had no ability to fix. We finally gave up and switched CPUs. Being open source allows other people to help you improve the code. There are a lot of highly skilled programmers working on Linux. When shipping their products is dependent on getting Allwinner code fixed, they will go in and fix bugs if they have the source code. They will also send you these fixes since they want them incorporated into the official releases. On another topic - kernel drivers. Closed source, out of tree kernel drivers are a security nightmare. Consider what happens when a security bug is found in the Linux kernel. The bug is disclosed and a fix is issued. For vendors on mainline they can quickly incorporate these patches and send our dynamic updates out to their products. But what about closed drivers? It is easy to crack into old kernels. The instructions on how to do it are included in the security vulnerability disclosure. Closed drivers prevent me from applying these security patches and moving onto a newer kernel. Instead I have to wait until Allwinner decides to update their kernels - which may be years. This attack method is used a lot in the wild. It is how the first attack against Sony was done (not the current one). They were running three year old kernels on their servers. Somebody just looked up the vulnerabilities that had been fixed and used one to walk right into their corporate network. This is a not a good thing for someone like Allwinner who is making security camera chips now. Thanks. Best Regards. ke...@allwinnertech.com From: Luc Verhaegen Date: 2015-02-25 11:55 To: linux-sunxi@googlegroups.com CC: Meng Zhang; sh...@allwinnertech.com Subject: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof. This was just posted on the allwinner github account: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec This contains: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/media-codec/blob/master/sunxi-cedarx/LIBRARY/CODEC/VIDEO/DECODER/libvdecoder.so This binary contains symbols from both ffmpeg (LGPL, but altered/hacked up) and libVP62 (anti-compiled from java, and taken off the web in 2006). The LGPL forces Allwinner to produce the full and complete source code of these binaries. How they are going to explain libVP62 to On2 Technologies, now google, is beyond me (cfr. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP6) With all the previous indiscretions, it was always possible to claim that there was some chance that Allwinner was not the source of the many violations. It was always pretty clear that Allwinner was the source, there were just too many coincidences, the violation was too all encompassing, and not a single device maker spilled the goods. The fact that they threw out a kernel tree with most code and all binaries removed, was, despite being a ludicrous and laughable action, another very clear sign that Allwinner was indeed the source of these violations. Now however, the fact that allwinner posted this very clearly shows that Allwinner is the source. It is absolutely unequivocal this time round. To top this off, it is 6 months after the last GPL violation shitstorm. This puts serious doubts behind the claims that Allwinner truly is learning and willing to cooperate. Allwinner, it is very high time to start playing nice. You've been at it for 4 years now and seem
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
On Wed, 25/2/15, ke...@allwinnertech.com ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote: Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx. [snip] I'm pleased to read that but in that case where are the sources? It is not hard (English meaning: it is easy) to find how you built the various binaries and then release the code. Please - to avoid more reminders and complaints - just get on with releasing the sources. Delay followed by more delay really makes you look bad, which is a pity as people are trying to support your devices. In future, just release the matching sources every time you release binaries. It is s easy! Regards, John -- 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.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner GPL violations: definitive proof.
On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 02:06:59PM +0800, ke...@allwinnertech.com wrote: Hi, Luc, Allwinner is trying to fix the GPL issue taken on Cedarx. It's been 4 years since your violations started. You have been told often enough. At least from 2012 onwards Allwinner has been very aware of the legal status of the software its business fully depends on. You were even given a nice consistent list of issues back in August, and in the 6 months that passed since then you have not fixed a single thing. We have release the latest version of cedarx with LGPL. No, you have not. And just close the code of Video Engine hardware, the framework and API is opensource. This is where you violate at least the ffmpeg LGPL license and breach on2 technologies (now google) copyright with the libVP62 symbols in there. I have been very clear and consistent about this, yet you still either fail to or are unwilling to understand. We will review the code again, to fix the GPL issues still existed. We are trying to do better, if you found any GPL issue, please let us know, we will fix it and update it ASAP. I have been pointing these out since at least august, quite concisely and very understandably. And all allwinner ever does is come with excuses and nonsense code or binary releases which just continue the violations. About the kernel GPL issue, we are fixing it now, we will update the code to open some drivers. Not some. ALL. As required by the GPL. Truly unbelievable and absolutely ludicrous. Luc Verhaegen. -- 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.
