> AMD made a single-board computer called the Gizmo Board, which is x86 > based. I'd assume that it has an AMD video card, which generally > require nonfree drivers for 3D acceleration to work.
And nonfree bytecode in the VGA ROM (what was used by the BIOS) that the kernel and X.Org drivers need for modesetting. > I hope Linus and other copyright holders of the Linux kernel will take > legal action against manufacturers who don't release the source code > of their drivers. It is a GPL violation, as the drivers become part of > the kernel once installed, and legally must be licensed under the GPL, > too. Many vendors do it in a GPL-compliant way. AMD kernel drivers (and Mesa and X.Org drivers) are free, while they interpret nonfree bytecode from the BIOS of the card and load nonfree microcode which is not derived From the kernel, so the GPL doesn't apply to it. Android devices from big vendors have kernel sources available, they include drivers that pass data between hardware and nonfree userspace libraries (and sometimes load the firmware from files or get it from userspace drivers). They probably have simple enough interfaces so the libraries aren't considered derived from the kernel. (Other vendors don't provide kernel sources, GPL enforcement in this case might be hard since only about two small organizations do it, there are multiple companies involved that don't have the source and the violators are Chinese companies.) Taking legal action would also require copyright holders wanting to change this. The fact that they accept these drivers and the nonfree firmware to the kernel and linux-firmware repos doesn't suggest it being true.
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