4 ms·

It would also be interesting to know how eMMC compares to the SATA interface that used to be available on old Allwinner SoCs before they canned it. I bought a

by avian 11y ago

It would also be interesting to know how eMMC compares to the SATA interface that used to be available on old Allwinner SoCs before they canned it. I bought a CubieTruck (Allwinner A20) and a SATA SSD drive simply because it seemed to be the only cheap ARM board with decent I/O performance.

chx 11y ago
Explain this to me as one hackernews reader to another: how come people are buying Allwinner stuff? Are you not aware of the repeated GPL violations or do you think undermining all of our work is not enough of a problem to warrant a boycott?
- geerlingguy 11y ago
  For me, I bought one Allwinner board (Orange Pi Plus) just to see how the experience/software/etc. compared to the others... and it was a terrible experience. So that mixed with the iffy licensing[1], I don't see a bright future for their chips/mainstream acceptance. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112094
- tagrun 11y ago
  Extending this logic, we should also avoid anything from China or any country with an oppressive regime, which have repeatedly been violating human rights (which I think is more important that violation of a software license). In fact, if we're talking ethics and politics now, there's also labor, abuse of workers and local people losing their jobs to cheap overseas workers issues.
- avian 11y ago
  In fact no, I was not aware of Allwinner GPL violations when I was buying it (which was about 2 years ago). If I knew about them, it might have affected my decision. I publish most of my software under GPL (check my blog and GitHub accounts), so I'm definitely not ambivalent to GPL violations. Then again, I don't have time these days to thoroughly research ideological aspects of all the stuff I buy. I bought a CubieTruck, not a tray of Allwinner chips. I'm sure that if you looked up track records of all supliers involved in any hardware product these days, you would find plenty that violated GPL at some point. I admire people that can say that they checked everything and that their laptops don't run any binary blobs and have no relations to known copyleft violators. I simply think my time is better spent in other pursuits.

by avian 11y ago

chx 11y ago

Explain this to me as one hackernews reader to another: how come people are buying Allwinner stuff? Are you not aware of the repeated GPL violations or do you think undermining all of our work is not enough of a problem to warrant a boycott?

geerlingguy 11y ago
For me, I bought one Allwinner board (Orange Pi Plus) just to see how the experience/software/etc. compared to the others... and it was a terrible experience. So that mixed with the iffy licensing[1], I don't see a bright future for their chips/mainstream acceptance. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112094 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9112094
tagrun 11y ago
Extending this logic, we should also avoid anything from China or any country with an oppressive regime, which have repeatedly been violating human rights (which I think is more important that violation of a software license). In fact, if we're talking ethics and politics now, there's also labor, abuse of workers and local people losing their jobs to cheap overseas workers issues.
avian 11y ago
In fact no, I was not aware of Allwinner GPL violations when I was buying it (which was about 2 years ago). If I knew about them, it might have affected my decision. I publish most of my software under GPL (check my blog and GitHub accounts), so I'm definitely not ambivalent to GPL violations. Then again, I don't have time these days to thoroughly research ideological aspects of all the stuff I buy. I bought a CubieTruck, not a tray of Allwinner chips. I'm sure that if you looked up track records of all supliers involved in any hardware product these days, you would find plenty that violated GPL at some point. I admire people that can say that they checked everything and that their laptops don't run any binary blobs and have no relations to known copyleft violators. I simply think my time is better spent in other pursuits.