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IP issue: Google doesn't have the right to give hardware vendors a pass on proprietary drivers for Linux. Ignoring the problem seems to work so far, though. Th
by ahartmetz 9y ago
IP issue: Google doesn't have the right to give hardware vendors a pass on proprietary drivers for Linux. Ignoring the problem seems to work so far, though.
That said, a stable driver API with the possibility to update the kernel without updating drivers is probably more important to Google. In the best case (and I expect a worse result than that) it means that Android phones can be updated for a long time without requiring support from the vendor.
The damn vendors should just upstream the damn drivers. Drivers for embedded hardware are such a clusterfuck. You have no idea how bad it is unless you have worked in that space.
- greglindahl 9y agoLinux "enterprise" distributions update things for a long time without requiring support from the hardware vendor. Google's familiar with this approach, I hear that they backported x86-64 to an earlier kernel for years.
- ahartmetz 9y agoIn the embedded case, usually only vendors have (or used to have, who knows if they use source control) the source code. As I said, you have no idea how bad it is unless you've had to work with that crap. Maybe have a look at "Bad" in this classic. https://www.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator-and-opengl-drivers-hall-fameshame/?cr=de https://www.dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/26/dolphin-emulator... Edit: right, you can backport fixes and features while keeping the ABI stable. That is what Google seems to be doing with Android kernels to some degree.
- swiley 9y agoLinux being GPLed is probably the only reason it's used so often on all these different embeded platforms. No one is sharing code on these other oses unless you have piles of money but with Linux anyone can pretty much click "y" in menuconfig and you're good to go on nearly anything. The GPL has made Linux a "Universal Kernel" of sorts.