Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 03:36:23PM +0100, Luc Verhaegen wrote: Time will tell. Luc Verhaegen. 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 joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 6:45 AM, Luc Verhaegen l...@skynet.be wrote: On Mon, Mar 03, 2014 at 07:46:21PM -0500, jonsm...@gmail.com wrote: Videos of the announcement here... http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/2014/03/03/linaro-connect-asia-2014-kicks-off-in-macau/ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/allwinner-joins-linaro-as-a-founding-member-of-the-linaro-digital-home-group-248195871.html Let's hope this translates to full corporate support for upstreaming to mainline. On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 2:37 PM, jonsm...@gmail.com jonsm...@gmail.com wrote: http://liliputing.com/2014/03/allwinner-joins-linaro-digital-home-group-commits-open-source-chip-support.html As i stated on irc, i am not too happy with allwinner joining linaro. For quite a few of the linaro member companies, this is really just another consortium. They dispatch some fluff engineers that are usually not too useful anywhere else, and then pat themselves on the back that they are now actively doing the open source thing as well. I think you are misreading this. Allwinnner is trying to increase their appeal in Western markets. Joining Linaro will increase these Western ties. Big companies that have already made it send fluff engineers, not small companies climbing the ladder. Smartest thing for Allwinner to do is rotate their engineers through Linaro relatively quickly so that they learn normal Linux practices. I would very much like to see Allwinner adopt normal Linux and Android build practices and become more involved in upstreaming code. Right now they just release tarballs which have no history or any way of tracking changes. So if Linaro teaches them about these processes we are all winners. I'd love to just see the first step of them maintaining forked Android repos off from Google's master copies. In turn that would let their customers fork the Allwinner repos with their custom changes. Doing that would enable security updates to flow through the repo chain. Currently there is absolutely no mechanism for pushing security updates. I was getting hopeful with allwinner talking to some of us directly in the last few weeks. But now that i learned that they joined linaro, that hope was lost. Allwinner joining linaro will only reduce Allwinners active contributions to linux-sunxi in future. They have chosen to back linaro instead, and will now dispatch some dispensable engineers to linaro, and feel good about themselves. And then they will turn around to us and state: but we are already doing open source, at linaro. There are some topnotch Linux engineers working at Linaro. Let's hope they mentor the Allwinner people so that they can take the practices they learn back to China. Besides, why can't linux-sunxi cooperate with the Linaro people? Everything Linaro does is on open mailing lists and servers. Maybe some of the linux-sunxi developers might poke around inside Linaro now and see if they can get themselves hired. 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/groups/opt_out. -- Jon Smirl jonsm...@gmail.com -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On Wed, Mar 05, 2014 at 09:22:45AM -0500, jonsm...@gmail.com wrote: I think you are misreading this. Allwinnner is trying to increase their appeal in Western markets. Joining Linaro will increase these Western ties. Big companies that have already made it send fluff engineers, not small companies climbing the ladder. Smartest thing for Allwinner to do is rotate their engineers through Linaro relatively quickly so that they learn normal Linux practices. I would very much like to see Allwinner adopt normal Linux and Android build practices and become more involved in upstreaming code. Right now they just release tarballs which have no history or any way of tracking changes. So if Linaro teaches them about these processes we are all winners. I'd love to just see the first step of them maintaining forked Android repos off from Google's master copies. In turn that would let their customers fork the Allwinner repos with their custom changes. Doing that would enable security updates to flow through the repo chain. Currently there is absolutely no mechanism for pushing security updates. There are some topnotch Linux engineers working at Linaro. Let's hope they mentor the Allwinner people so that they can take the practices they learn back to China. Besides, why can't linux-sunxi cooperate with the Linaro people? Everything Linaro does is on open mailing lists and servers. Maybe some of the linux-sunxi developers might poke around inside Linaro now and see if they can get themselves hired. Time will tell. 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
What does this mean for the laymen? Will allwinner provide cedarx source code? Will allwinner release enough information that essentially linux distros (xbmclinux) can easiliy be created for allwinner based STBs and android sticks? (im thinking Mele M9 here!) Thanks, Craig On Wednesday, 5 March 2014 11:45:27 UTC, Luc Verhaegen wrote: On Mon, Mar 03, 2014 at 07:46:21PM -0500, jons...@gmail.com javascript:wrote: Videos of the announcement here... http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/2014/03/03/linaro-connect-asia-2014-kicks-off-in-macau/ http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/allwinner-joins-linaro-as-a-founding-member-of-the-linaro-digital-home-group-248195871.html Let's hope this translates to full corporate support for upstreaming to mainline. On Mon, Mar 3, 2014 at 2:37 PM, jons...@gmail.com javascript: jons...@gmail.com javascript: wrote: http://liliputing.com/2014/03/allwinner-joins-linaro-digital-home-group-commits-open-source-chip-support.html As i stated on irc, i am not too happy with allwinner joining linaro. For quite a few of the linaro member companies, this is really just another consortium. They dispatch some fluff engineers that are usually not too useful anywhere else, and then pat themselves on the back that they are now actively doing the open source thing as well. I was getting hopeful with allwinner talking to some of us directly in the last few weeks. But now that i learned that they joined linaro, that hope was lost. Allwinner joining linaro will only reduce Allwinners active contributions to linux-sunxi in future. They have chosen to back linaro instead, and will now dispatch some dispensable engineers to linaro, and feel good about themselves. And then they will turn around to us and state: but we are already doing open source, at linaro. 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
For quite a few of the linaro member companies, this is really just another consortium. They dispatch some fluff engineers that are usually not too useful anywhere else, and then pat themselves on the back that they are now actively doing the open source thing as well. Linaro is completely useless if company decides to go sort of opensource/we-don't-care-about-you. Recent example is Huawei's daughter, HiSilicon joining Linaro - you cant use Linaro hisi kernel anywhere, there is just no public devices that can run it. I'm saying this as an owner of a tablet on HiSilicon K3V2. HiSilicon got their mainline and android kernel working - but no one, except themselves, can use it because u-boot/x-loader sources are closed and zero usage manuals provided. Plus Huawei got into securityboot/drm thing android hype and locked the bootloaders - to get the unlock code for fastboot you need to know someone from Huawei or wait 2-3 weeks for support answer (some times, they dont get what you want and you need to write two or three times until they figure out and send your request properly). Imagine what happens when 2k users of K3V2 tablets will request drm-off. I, of course, could spent a week with an osc probe seeking for UART on 45+ testpoints on my tablets 5mil pcb and then infinite amount of time figuring out their bootsequence, patch x-loader and launch it and it will probably work, but seriously, why just they don't start with basic plan/reference documentation of what they are doing and how to test/help? That is typical Linaro picture for me right now, and I do not expect anything interesting out of Allwinner either. I bet they will push crappy sun8i/sun9i support and couple missing drivers (as everything simple is already done) and then forget about it... Lets just hope we will not see our code with copyrights removed. Allwinner joining linaro will only reduce Allwinners active contributions to linux-sunxi in future. Even more - Allwinner joining Linaro will lead to less interest from other guys like Free-Electrons/RedHat. -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 11:16 AM, Dmitriy B. rzk...@gmail.com wrote: Besides, why can't linux-sunxi cooperate with the Linaro people? Everything Linaro does is on open mailing lists and servers Because its not. Try to find reference manuals for latest Exynos, HiSilicon K3V2 and other Linaro members SoCs and try to join the development, send a That is not in the category of what Linaro does. The code written at Linaro is open and open lists discuss it. It is the vendor pushing those NDAs, not Linaro. Joining Linaro is not going to automatically change Allwinner's position on keeping Cedar source secret. Do we even know for sure if Allwinner has the ability to open source it and that Cedar is free from a third party licensing mess? BTW, Hisilicon has never been open source friendly so why did you buy their stuff? patch there (hint: you wont be able to. Because: NDAs, strict userlist and zero documentation). I haven't had any trouble with getting them to take my patches. But maybe they are in a gray area since several of the key ARM kernel maintainers are also Linaro employees. Here are the mailing lists... http://lists.linaro.org/mailman/listinfo I'm not insider but I believe there are two kinds of NDAs inside of Linaro. 1) Vendors that don't want to be open. 2) NDAs for unannounced products. By any way you slice it, I believe Allwinner joining Linaro will improve their software offerings, not hurt them. -- 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/groups/opt_out. -- Jon Smirl jonsm...@gmail.com -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On Wed, Mar 5, 2014 at 12:19 PM, Dmitriy B. rzk...@gmail.com wrote: That is not in the category of what Linaro does. The code written at Linaro is open and open lists discuss it. How do I discuss it when I cant even run it? It is the vendor pushing those NDAs, not Linaro. Joining Linaro is not going to automatically change Allwinner's position on keeping Cedar source secret. Do we even know for sure if Allwinner has the ability to open source it and that Cedar is free from a third party licensing mess. Cedar is described well enough right now at linux-sunxi and if Linaro wants - they will try to use that. If not - we will see another implementation of unusable kernelside V4L2 dec/enc with userspace part that is distributed by NDAs (look at Coda/Samsung MFC/whatever is kicking there right now. For MFC it took couple months to get it running well enough with XBMC for Exynos4). BTW, Hisilicon has never been open source friendly so why did you buy their stuff? I'm happy with my android there. But, its just the fact that HiSilicon spend time and money on getting mainline and 3.10.x android kernels that bothers me. Why cant I use it? No, lets say different, for exactly *who* it was made opensource? For a nice line in press release we are now opensource? Not usable - that is the picture of Linaro that I mean here as a HiSilicon device owner. Sorry if it sounds too raw, but thats the facts. :) Hope it will be different for Allwinner. By any way you slice it, I believe Allwinner joining Linaro will improve their software offerings, not hurt them. Actually, If you had experience working with Linaro, could you please hint there that we could enjoy CSI drivers for A1x/A20, since you had/have a The CSI driver in sunxi is an ancient version. Recent support for the CSI unit is in their Android kernel. Nobody has ported this new code into the sunxi kernel. I started to do the port but there has been a lot of divergence between the two kernels and the port is more of a rewrite. There are more complications to this since Android has modified the VL4 interface. AFAIK there isn't any missing info preventing this port. My current understanding of the Android CSI driver is that I don't know of any obvious problems with it. Some of the image sensors don't work right but those are problems in the image sensor drivers. What I initially thought were problems in the CSI code are actually problems in the h.264 code. In general not all features of the CSI unit are supported. For example the CSI unit supports Transport Stream input but I've never seen a driver or hardware for it. Unclear if anyone has written a driver for it yet. What isn't working right is h.264 encoding. I can't get Cedar to compress more than around 10:1 and x86 software encoders can do 50:1 pr more. Not being able to achieve high compression ratios means that 720P consumes too much bandwidth to be used on the Internet. I have been unable to get it to generate streams less than 10Mb/s while my desktop has no problem generating 500Kb/s streams. My next step is to put together a bunch of sample encodings to demonstrate to Allwinner what it should be doing. If they are given examples showing exactly what they need to do I suspect they will fix the h.264 blob. project in that field? As I said - everything simple was already done, even ARM PSCI is working with help from ARM employee. But things like kernelside Cedar, CSI and other multimedia stuff is missing http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Left_to_be_done It would be nice for Linaro to start from there, and not with rewriting what is already done. -- 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/groups/opt_out. -- Jon Smirl jonsm...@gmail.com -- 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/groups/opt_out.
Re: [linux-sunxi] Re: Allwinner joins Linaro Digital Home Group, commits to open source chip support
On 5 March 2014 00:10, jonsm...@gmail.com jonsm...@gmail.com wrote: On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 3:12 AM, Yousong Zhou yszhou4t...@gmail.com wrote: On 4 March 2014 08:46, jonsm...@gmail.com jonsm...@gmail.com wrote: Let's hope this translates to full corporate support for upstreaming to mainline. Just curious, do current member companies of Linaro push full support for their chips into mainline Linux? I mean, are most parts of those chips full functional with open source drivers? I know the open source GPU support is far from good, but to what extent is upstreaming support to mainline part of Linaro's object? AFAIK no member of Linaro has provided GPU driver source for the kernel. But don't hold companies like Allwinner responsible for this. Almost all ARM CPUs use GPU designs provided either by ARM, Inc or Imagination Technologies. Those two companies refuse to provide the source for their GPU drivers. Allwinner doesn't have any options here - all of the GPU designs they can pick from are controlled by companies that are closed source. The official excuse for closed source GPU drivers is that GPUs are a patent minefield. By opening the source the patent trolls would gain access to information that would let them file a bunch of annoying lawsuits. But in the last year or two both Intel and AMD have overcome this fear and open sourced their GPU implementations. Neither company received a tidal wave of GPU related lawsuits. Recently I signed a NDA for a non-GPU chip. Gone are the days of single page NDA. This one had over twenty pages of dense legalize all of which was aimed at keeping me from using any of the information disclosed in a lawsuit against the vendor. So it took two months of messing around with legal to get access to the datasheets for this chip. An hour after I was able to see the full datasheet I determined that we couldn't use the chip. Gigantic waste of time. We went with a TI chip. Publicly available datasheets and app notes for the TI chip contain more useful info than what I got out of the NDA loving company. Not knowing these information before and can be counted as another bunch of reasons why patents are bad. I tend to think Linaro as a place for the ARM world to standardize things and upstreaming code to the Linux kernel is just a by-product. Thanks, Jon. yousong -- 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/groups/opt_out.
