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Strictly speaking the kernel drivers for the ARM Malis are all open-source and GPL licensed (they need to be, since their customers want to ship Linux to consum
by stefan_ 8y ago
Strictly speaking the kernel drivers for the ARM Malis are all open-source and GPL licensed (they need to be, since their customers want to ship Linux to consumers).
They are also entirely useless without the userland software that is doing all the actual work. The kernel drivers are just glorified task and memory managers.
- rjsw 8y agoIt would be nice if they had been dual-licenced like the radeon, intel and nouveau kernel drivers. I thought that the Lima and Panfrost projects included an open-source userland component too.
- stefan_ 8y agoThey do, the userland part is in Mesa: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa
- robert_foss 8y agoWhile the kernel driver is Open Source, they have decided to implement a driver that can _never_ be submitted upstream for Kernel inclusion.
- gravypod 8y agoCould you expand on this? I don't follow kernel development closely. Why can't it be upstreamed? Is there something the community can do to modify their code for inclusion?
- stefan_ 8y agoThe DRM subsystem where the graphics drivers live in Linux has a strict open source userland policy - every new kernel interface needs a corresponding real userland implementation that exercises it. So a graphics driver that is only used by a closed source userland blob has no chance of being upstreamed. And of course just generally vendor kernel code tends to have superfluous middle layers or abuse kernel interfaces in unintended ways.