4 ms·

Ah ok, so Broadcom have said it's ok to write the drivers, but it's a slow slog to actually get a working set of drivers written from scratch?

EMIRELADERO 5y ago
Which is also confusing. What IP would Broadcom be "losing" by not releasing the driver code but still making the specs and implementation documents public? Is it just an out-of-spite decision, something like "I'm not gonna help a potential competitor that much"?
- delusional 5y ago
  Could be a case that Broadcom bought the software blob (in whole or in part) and don't have the rights to release is publicly.
  - bennyp101 5y ago
    Yea, maybe its a way to get around their legal requirements - "here are the ingredients, but you need to figure out the recipe kinda thing"
  - cleverca22 5y ago
    i have seen evidence that RPF cant properly modify some of the h264 blobs so they are instead patching the blob at runtime
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- simias 5y ago
  For many companies releasing their code is not something they would usually consider, regardless of whether it offers a competitive advantage or not. It's just not in the culture. They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do. So basically if you want to convince these companies to open source some of their components "what do you have to lose?" is not good enough, you have to give them an actual incentive. I suspect that outside of places like HN very few people really care about Broadcom's binary blob in the rpi.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    > what do you have to lose?" The problem with this is there are unknowns. Maybe nothing, but if there is something none of us have even thought of that can be a big loss. It is really hard to get past this fear.
  - wiz21c 5y ago
    > They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do. If they don't gain/loose anything but we gain something, I see a net positive for society.
    - simias 5y ago
      Unfortunately that's not usually a good enough motivation for most companies. To be clear, I'm not arguing that I don't think it would be a good thing for them to release the code (I most certainly would welcome a fully open source rpi), I've just been confronted to this mindset a lot at work. Closed source is the default, releasing anything publicly means going through many hoops and levels of hierarchy. If there's no obvious benefit for the company and you don't have insiders strongly pushing for it it won't happen.
    - JasonFruit 5y ago
      My bet — and IANAL — is that a corporate lawyer looks at the idea and sees no benefit, but an unknown, probably small, increase in potential liability. In that case why would they approve it? They're not evil, particularly, but they are analyzing the situation in terms of risk and benefit. Societal benefit doesn't make their list.
      - skissane 5y ago
        Also, the lawyer can skim-read the technical documentation, and even if they don't really understand it, they can reassure themselves that if there were any legal issues in it they would have noticed them. By contrast, few lawyers can read code, so they can't give themselves the same reassurance with respect to it.
      - 5y ago
- als0 5y ago
  From what I know about the graphics industry, it's not necessarily about losing your IP, it's about exposing your IP for litigation. There are some big patent trolls out there as well as some very well known names who will exercise their legal department, so the natural thing companies tend to do is to keep things closed. Things will become more interesting as more open source SoCs appear...
- monocasa 5y ago
  It's running on a proprietary RTOS.
- paulmd 5y ago
  > What IP would Broadcom be "losing" by not releasing the driver code what if there's some IP they licensed from another vendor in there somewhere and it's so entangled (or foundational - eg graphics IP, etc) that they can't release it at all? what if there's some IP that they don't realize is licensed from another vendor and they get in trouble? what if there isn't, but someone else says there is, function X is too close to our implementation, and it starts a big legal battle? Or what if you run into some patent troll who makes a business out of digging through code to find anything they can sue over? what if there's some copyleft code some dumbshit engineer copy/pasted and it ends up leveraging the whole codebase open? etc etc This is a classic situation of "Broadcom gains nothing in the next quarter or even the next 5 years from releasing the source, only potential (if unlikely) downsides, and the only people who will be outraged are a handful of nerds who are ultimately irrelevant to Broadcom's (not RPi Foundation's) business". It is a testament to the success of copyleft that people have now embraced that as the default and view proprietary stuff with outright suspicion just as a default, but a proprietary strategy is both legitimate operationally (nobody opens everything) and as a risk-mitigation strategy.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    NSA helped a lot with that last one...

EMIRELADERO 5y ago

Which is also confusing. What IP would Broadcom be "losing" by not releasing the driver code but still making the specs and implementation documents public? Is it just an out-of-spite decision, something like "I'm not gonna help a potential competitor that much"?

delusional 5y ago
Could be a case that Broadcom bought the software blob (in whole or in part) and don't have the rights to release is publicly.
- bennyp101 5y ago
  Yea, maybe its a way to get around their legal requirements - "here are the ingredients, but you need to figure out the recipe kinda thing"
- cleverca22 5y ago
  i have seen evidence that RPF cant properly modify some of the h264 blobs so they are instead patching the blob at runtime
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
simias 5y ago
For many companies releasing their code is not something they would usually consider, regardless of whether it offers a competitive advantage or not. It's just not in the culture. They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do. So basically if you want to convince these companies to open source some of their components "what do you have to lose?" is not good enough, you have to give them an actual incentive. I suspect that outside of places like HN very few people really care about Broadcom's binary blob in the rpi.
- bluGill 5y ago
  > what do you have to lose?" The problem with this is there are unknowns. Maybe nothing, but if there is something none of us have even thought of that can be a big loss. It is really hard to get past this fear.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  > They don't see what they have to gain by releasing the code, but they worry that it may create issues if they do. If they don't gain/loose anything but we gain something, I see a net positive for society.
  - simias 5y ago
    Unfortunately that's not usually a good enough motivation for most companies. To be clear, I'm not arguing that I don't think it would be a good thing for them to release the code (I most certainly would welcome a fully open source rpi), I've just been confronted to this mindset a lot at work. Closed source is the default, releasing anything publicly means going through many hoops and levels of hierarchy. If there's no obvious benefit for the company and you don't have insiders strongly pushing for it it won't happen.
  - JasonFruit 5y ago
    My bet — and IANAL — is that a corporate lawyer looks at the idea and sees no benefit, but an unknown, probably small, increase in potential liability. In that case why would they approve it? They're not evil, particularly, but they are analyzing the situation in terms of risk and benefit. Societal benefit doesn't make their list.
    - skissane 5y ago
      Also, the lawyer can skim-read the technical documentation, and even if they don't really understand it, they can reassure themselves that if there were any legal issues in it they would have noticed them. By contrast, few lawyers can read code, so they can't give themselves the same reassurance with respect to it.
    - 5y ago
als0 5y ago
From what I know about the graphics industry, it's not necessarily about losing your IP, it's about exposing your IP for litigation. There are some big patent trolls out there as well as some very well known names who will exercise their legal department, so the natural thing companies tend to do is to keep things closed. Things will become more interesting as more open source SoCs appear...
monocasa 5y ago
It's running on a proprietary RTOS.
paulmd 5y ago
> What IP would Broadcom be "losing" by not releasing the driver code what if there's some IP they licensed from another vendor in there somewhere and it's so entangled (or foundational - eg graphics IP, etc) that they can't release it at all? what if there's some IP that they don't realize is licensed from another vendor and they get in trouble? what if there isn't, but someone else says there is, function X is too close to our implementation, and it starts a big legal battle? Or what if you run into some patent troll who makes a business out of digging through code to find anything they can sue over? what if there's some copyleft code some dumbshit engineer copy/pasted and it ends up leveraging the whole codebase open? etc etc This is a classic situation of "Broadcom gains nothing in the next quarter or even the next 5 years from releasing the source, only potential (if unlikely) downsides, and the only people who will be outraged are a handful of nerds who are ultimately irrelevant to Broadcom's (not RPi Foundation's) business". It is a testament to the success of copyleft that people have now embraced that as the default and view proprietary stuff with outright suspicion just as a default, but a proprietary strategy is both legitimate operationally (nobody opens everything) and as a risk-mitigation strategy.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  NSA helped a lot with that last one...