4 ms·

The sorry state of open source on ARM is not due to the vendors but ARM itself and to an extent Google. The effort to open GPU drivers on ARM is over 5 years ol

by throw2016 10y ago

The sorry state of open source on ARM is not due to the vendors but ARM itself and to an extent Google. The effort to open GPU drivers on ARM is over 5 years old now I think and you can see all the promises made on the ARM community forums. The blame is shifted from the vendor to ARM and then back like a football and open source developers give up and look for something productive to do. It appears Arm is not interested in open source or moving beyond the mobile market where things are tightly controlled.

Solinoid 10y ago
Can you explain further how Google is possibly at fault here? Legitimately ignorant of the situation.
- rwmj 10y ago
  Google is currently developing an alternate kernel which will be MIT licensed. They've been removing GPL from userspace as fast as they can, and now it seems they want to remove it from the whole system. http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-new-operating-system http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-ne... https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENS...
  - mwcampbell 10y ago
    I doubt that the primary motivation for Magenta is to eliminate the GPL'd Linux kernel from Android. A much more practical way to do that would be to use one of the BSDs.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      They also deprecated GCC from the NDK, going forward only clang will be supported. GCC is still around, because just like it happened with Apple, there are a few features that clang still lacks in order to fully replace it in the context of Android. Brillo has even less GPL components than Android.
  - dispose13432 10y ago
    Out of curiosity, will this end custom ROMs?
    - sangnoir 10y ago
      Not necessarily, but it will be harder work reverse-engineering what OEMs do without the modified kernel source releases
  - matthewmacleod 10y ago
    I don't think you can legitimately say that Google are hampering open source by releasing more open source software. You might argue that they're stepping back from the GPL, but that's different.
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      I bet in around 10 years time, the GPL will be surely missed, but then it will be too late.
      - squarefoot 10y ago
        +1 Even today Android is falsely advertised as open source while in fact you can't install the OSS version on any phone and expect it to work without proprietary blobs. Thank closed device drivers for that, and more restrictions will come in the future. Right now the OSS community should focus their efforts on the most important goal: having fully open source hardware CPUs and peripherals. We already have huge loads of open source software but we still lack a comparatively open iron to run them on.
        rwmj 10y ago
        Well, RISC-V is coming and some of that will be fully open source, freely licensed hardware. For example: http://www.lowrisc.org/ http://www.lowrisc.org/ Peripherals are a lot more tricky. RISC-V is concentrating on the CPU cores, cache hierarchy and interrupt controller. Peripherals will be proprietary for a while, but could be open source one day.
- throw2016 10y ago
  The entire ARM ecosystem is basically Google and ARM. Google is using open source Linux to power Android but all the hardware drivers are closed. The only reason you cannot simply install and use Linux on any Android device is the closed source drivers. Yet these drivers exists and work perfectly for Android which is the Linux kernel, so why are they not being made available after all these years? If there was any interest in open source by Arm or Google they would make some minimum intiatives to makes the drivers available but not a single initiative exists. There have been multiple discussion on Ars and HN itself about Google's relations with Android and open source.. [1]http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
  - glandium 10y ago
    What does Google have anything to do with this? If there are companies to blame for the sorry state of open source on ARM, that would be Qualcomm, Broadcom, and other SoC makers.
  - andreiw 10y ago
    That might be the entire mobile ecosystem (although that sounds too simplistic, still, you are forgetting Linaro), but the ARM ecosystem also includes M-profile (deep embedded), R-profile (RTOS) and server-class (SBSA and "almost" designs like Octeon-TX and Tegra X1). The ARM server ecosystem is most definitely a bunch of software and hardware players, and Google is not a significant presence there FWIW.
lgeek 10y ago
It's annoying there's no Free driver stack for the Mali GPUs, but pretty much all other ARM IP is supported just fine in mainline Linux. Calling it a 'sorry state of open source on ARM' seems disingenuous.
- throw2016 10y ago
  This is inaccurate. ARM SOCs are all different and tightly closed. Which ARM SOC can you run on Linux without support from third party open source developers? You need more than just CPU support for it to be usable, and most mainline support is the minimum to make the Android part of it work. Drivers for all the hardware bits are tied tightly to Android. Is there any ARM SOC yet that ARM has said can run Linux out of the box? Only the rasberry pi works on the latest mainline and that is due to the work done by the foundation and there too the GPU driver is a blob.
  - kefka 10y ago
    Egads... They aren't "tightly closed". Just there's no way to enumerate what devices are on what IO on the chip. - Don't get me wrong, many dealers just don't broadcast what's on a fabless-fab. Doesn't mean they're closed. Go hire someone who speaks and types Mandarin and get the info about "Gongkai". We were at this place once before, with 16 bit soundcards and ISA, for those of you that remember. In those days, we had to set IRQ and I/O so the device could communicate with the computer. And those devices had to correspond with each other. It was a hot mess, but what we had. MCA tried to fix it, with proprietary crappiness, but PCI actually won out. In reality, ARM is too open, and has too manhy ways in which hardware can be added. That causes problems, because there's no detection routines - "detection" can crash certain chips.
    - swiley 10y ago
      Enumeration is solved by device tree. The problem really is drivers for important parts of SOCs that make running Linux on them practical.
  - lgeek 10y ago

Solinoid 10y ago

Can you explain further how Google is possibly at fault here? Legitimately ignorant of the situation.

rwmj 10y ago
Google is currently developing an alternate kernel which will be MIT licensed. They've been removing GPL from userspace as fast as they can, and now it seems they want to remove it from the whole system. http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-new-operating-system http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/15/12480566/google-fuchsia-ne... https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/fuchsia-mirror/magenta/blob/master/LICENS...
- mwcampbell 10y ago
  I doubt that the primary motivation for Magenta is to eliminate the GPL'd Linux kernel from Android. A much more practical way to do that would be to use one of the BSDs.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    They also deprecated GCC from the NDK, going forward only clang will be supported. GCC is still around, because just like it happened with Apple, there are a few features that clang still lacks in order to fully replace it in the context of Android. Brillo has even less GPL components than Android.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, will this end custom ROMs?
  - sangnoir 10y ago
    Not necessarily, but it will be harder work reverse-engineering what OEMs do without the modified kernel source releases
- matthewmacleod 10y ago
  I don't think you can legitimately say that Google are hampering open source by releasing more open source software. You might argue that they're stepping back from the GPL, but that's different.
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    I bet in around 10 years time, the GPL will be surely missed, but then it will be too late.
    - squarefoot 10y ago
      +1 Even today Android is falsely advertised as open source while in fact you can't install the OSS version on any phone and expect it to work without proprietary blobs. Thank closed device drivers for that, and more restrictions will come in the future. Right now the OSS community should focus their efforts on the most important goal: having fully open source hardware CPUs and peripherals. We already have huge loads of open source software but we still lack a comparatively open iron to run them on.
      - rwmj 10y ago
        Well, RISC-V is coming and some of that will be fully open source, freely licensed hardware. For example: http://www.lowrisc.org/ http://www.lowrisc.org/ Peripherals are a lot more tricky. RISC-V is concentrating on the CPU cores, cache hierarchy and interrupt controller. Peripherals will be proprietary for a while, but could be open source one day.
throw2016 10y ago
The entire ARM ecosystem is basically Google and ARM. Google is using open source Linux to power Android but all the hardware drivers are closed. The only reason you cannot simply install and use Linux on any Android device is the closed source drivers. Yet these drivers exists and work perfectly for Android which is the Linux kernel, so why are they not being made available after all these years? If there was any interest in open source by Arm or Google they would make some minimum intiatives to makes the drivers available but not a single initiative exists. There have been multiple discussion on Ars and HN itself about Google's relations with Android and open source.. [1]http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...
- glandium 10y ago
  What does Google have anything to do with this? If there are companies to blame for the sorry state of open source on ARM, that would be Qualcomm, Broadcom, and other SoC makers.
- andreiw 10y ago
  That might be the entire mobile ecosystem (although that sounds too simplistic, still, you are forgetting Linaro), but the ARM ecosystem also includes M-profile (deep embedded), R-profile (RTOS) and server-class (SBSA and "almost" designs like Octeon-TX and Tegra X1). The ARM server ecosystem is most definitely a bunch of software and hardware players, and Google is not a significant presence there FWIW.

lgeek 10y ago

It's annoying there's no Free driver stack for the Mali GPUs, but pretty much all other ARM IP is supported just fine in mainline Linux. Calling it a 'sorry state of open source on ARM' seems disingenuous.

throw2016 10y ago
This is inaccurate. ARM SOCs are all different and tightly closed. Which ARM SOC can you run on Linux without support from third party open source developers? You need more than just CPU support for it to be usable, and most mainline support is the minimum to make the Android part of it work. Drivers for all the hardware bits are tied tightly to Android. Is there any ARM SOC yet that ARM has said can run Linux out of the box? Only the rasberry pi works on the latest mainline and that is due to the work done by the foundation and there too the GPU driver is a blob.
- kefka 10y ago
  Egads... They aren't "tightly closed". Just there's no way to enumerate what devices are on what IO on the chip. - Don't get me wrong, many dealers just don't broadcast what's on a fabless-fab. Doesn't mean they're closed. Go hire someone who speaks and types Mandarin and get the info about "Gongkai". We were at this place once before, with 16 bit soundcards and ISA, for those of you that remember. In those days, we had to set IRQ and I/O so the device could communicate with the computer. And those devices had to correspond with each other. It was a hot mess, but what we had. MCA tried to fix it, with proprietary crappiness, but PCI actually won out. In reality, ARM is too open, and has too manhy ways in which hardware can be added. That causes problems, because there's no detection routines - "detection" can crash certain chips.
  - swiley 10y ago
    Enumeration is solved by device tree. The problem really is drivers for important parts of SOCs that make running Linux on them practical.
- lgeek 10y ago