9 ms·

Allwinner's been known to play hard and fast with the GPL and LGPL, so I'm not sure I'd cite them for being better about open source. cf. http://linux-sunxi.or

Allwinner's been known to play hard and fast with the GPL and LGPL, so I'm not sure I'd cite them for being better about open source. cf. http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations http://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations

makomk 10y ago
I think they got their act together a while ago. More importantly, part of the reason they got in so much hot water is they didn't use the Pi's GPL compliance technique of moving everything interesting into a blob running on a totally undocumented core. Everything important runs on the ARM core. (I believe some of the newer SoCs have an embedded core for power management, but apparently it's OpenRISC-based.)
trome 10y ago
Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. Not saying they did any of that mind you, but they at least put the docs out there and eventually posted their BSP on github under GPLv2, so their changes could be updated & mainlined.
- justabystander 10y ago
  > Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. It is not fully open. (http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX). Partial code was published a year and a half ago, but the video engine still isn't supported. Their GPUs are Mali, as well, which is still a large obstacle in running a modern kernel. Not to mention that all the code they published was as code dumps, some was under unclear licensing, and it's never on a remotely modern kernel, so it requires heavy porting. But yeah, they did release the code after years of complaints about GPL violations. Giving a company credit for community efforts is kind of misleading.
  - trome 10y ago
    Uhh, if you want a bad experience from a closed source blob, CedarX is your go to. Cedrus is the fully open VPU driver I was referring to, with H265, VP8 and H264 support. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus Mali is still closed source, but GPUs in general are in a poor state for open driver support. Luckily you don't need GPU drivers to bring up Xorg on HDMI on Allwinner chips, so unless your playing video games, it is a non-issue. Their code dumps they have cleared up the licensing on as of late, Tyle from Allwinner did make clear that everything that isn't explicitly licensed in the file itself is under GPLv2, and that that was Allwinner's original intention. The fact that they are ancient BSP kernels is sucky, but the community is making these sub-$1 SOCs run circles around the other SBCs.
wycx 10y ago
Allwinner itself might not be the best example of open source support, but Allwinners products are well supported in the mainline kernel by the outstanding work of the linux sunxi team. See their progress here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort edit: I now see you link to linux-sunxi, so you probably already know about this.
userbinator 10y ago
They release plenty of documentation, which is more than can be said for Broadcom who seem to be doing all they can to both stay proprietary and legal. Broadcom supplies binary blobs, some source code (which is definitely not for those blobs given how anal they are about IP/licensing), and almost no documentation; AllWinner supplies binary blobs (which are based on existing open-source, thus easier to reverse-engineer), some source code, and far more documentation. Regardless of the legal situation, the contrast is clear.

makomk 10y ago

I think they got their act together a while ago. More importantly, part of the reason they got in so much hot water is they didn't use the Pi's GPL compliance technique of moving everything interesting into a blob running on a totally undocumented core. Everything important runs on the ARM core. (I believe some of the newer SoCs have an embedded core for power management, but apparently it's OpenRISC-based.)

trome 10y ago

Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. Not saying they did any of that mind you, but they at least put the docs out there and eventually posted their BSP on github under GPLv2, so their changes could be updated & mainlined.

justabystander 10y ago
> Yet they have the best mainline driver support, with a fully open VPU driver. It is not fully open. (http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX). Partial code was published a year and a half ago, but the video engine still isn't supported. Their GPUs are Mali, as well, which is still a large obstacle in running a modern kernel. Not to mention that all the code they published was as code dumps, some was under unclear licensing, and it's never on a remotely modern kernel, so it requires heavy porting. But yeah, they did release the code after years of complaints about GPL violations. Giving a company credit for community efforts is kind of misleading.
- trome 10y ago
  Uhh, if you want a bad experience from a closed source blob, CedarX is your go to. Cedrus is the fully open VPU driver I was referring to, with H265, VP8 and H264 support. http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus Mali is still closed source, but GPUs in general are in a poor state for open driver support. Luckily you don't need GPU drivers to bring up Xorg on HDMI on Allwinner chips, so unless your playing video games, it is a non-issue. Their code dumps they have cleared up the licensing on as of late, Tyle from Allwinner did make clear that everything that isn't explicitly licensed in the file itself is under GPLv2, and that that was Allwinner's original intention. The fact that they are ancient BSP kernels is sucky, but the community is making these sub-$1 SOCs run circles around the other SBCs.

wycx 10y ago

Allwinner itself might not be the best example of open source support, but Allwinners products are well supported in the mainline kernel by the outstanding work of the linux sunxi team. See their progress here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort edit: I now see you link to linux-sunxi, so you probably already know about this.

userbinator 10y ago

They release plenty of documentation, which is more than can be said for Broadcom who seem to be doing all they can to both stay proprietary and legal. Broadcom supplies binary blobs, some source code (which is definitely not for those blobs given how anal they are about IP/licensing), and almost no documentation; AllWinner supplies binary blobs (which are based on existing open-source, thus easier to reverse-engineer), some source code, and far more documentation. Regardless of the legal situation, the contrast is clear.