3 ms·

Offtopic question : broadcom doesn't want to open source the driver because of the red tape and ton of legal work required Or is there another reason ?

josteink 4y ago
Broadcom seems to generally have issues with open-source. It’s one of the reasons OpenWRT has poor support for Broadcom SoCs and Broadcom WiFi-controllers, and in general Broadcom-based devices are shunned in the OpenWRT community. It seems to be a company-wide thing.
- spyremeown 4y ago
  Broadcom is one of the reasons why the rpi foundation is able to ship so many devices. But I also believe they should, perhaps, find another partner, who's willing to go full in the open source thing.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    Broadcom must have earned heaps from Raspberry Pi in all in all. Was it a buddy deal to start with, isn't the rpi founder ex-Broadcom?
    - ahartmetz 4y ago
      Yes and yes, they make no secret of it.
    - __alexs 4y ago
      The original prototypes for an RPi like thing by Upton were ATMega based [1] but I imagine with Upton's connections to Broadcom it made some sense both technically and financially. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20111024203123/http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=264 https://web.archive.org/web/20111024203123/http://www.raspbe...
  - trissylegs 4y ago
    Thing is nearly all the ARM-chip manufactures are similar or the same. One of the weird things about the Apple M chips (well at least on Laptops) is you can make the more open source than most ARM chips.
    - robotnikman 4y ago
      This is one of the reasons why I sort of dread the upcoming move to arm on desktops and laptops, despite the potential massive performance improvements. At least it seems like the industry will need to head that way if they want performance per watt on par with the Apple M chips.
- trissylegs 4y ago
  Linux in general has issues with Broadcom wifi. If you're shopping for a laptop to run linux. One of the biggest red flags for driver support is Broadcom wifi.
- throwbcm 4y ago
  The story as I heard it is: There original WRT54g that was the start of openWRT was BCM chip. BCM wrote a lot of the software, especially low level, as Cisco was their major customer at the time. Then Cisco got sued for GPL violations that were BCM's fault. Both companies were large and not too worried by lawsuits, but eventually it dawned on them that unlike the usual between businesses, they weren't just going to be able to settle by paying some money, because their antagonists were not in it for the money. They had to release the source, which both companies regarded as significantly part of their own IP. Cisco was pissed at BCM, BCM were upset that an external factor could piss off their major customer like this, and some high ranked individuals at BCM were butthurt about open source licenses having a say in their operations. So a policy was put in place that where significant R&D effort was made on software, in product lines those individuals controlled, it would be legally firewalled from open source licenses, even to the extent of designing future chip architectures so that there were extra processors, not running Linux, that would run features BCM wanted to keep proprietary. So that's why it's difficult to run open WRT on BCM chips. Caveat: I did not get this first or second hand.

josteink 4y ago

Broadcom seems to generally have issues with open-source. It’s one of the reasons OpenWRT has poor support for Broadcom SoCs and Broadcom WiFi-controllers, and in general Broadcom-based devices are shunned in the OpenWRT community. It seems to be a company-wide thing.

spyremeown 4y ago
Broadcom is one of the reasons why the rpi foundation is able to ship so many devices. But I also believe they should, perhaps, find another partner, who's willing to go full in the open source thing.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Broadcom must have earned heaps from Raspberry Pi in all in all. Was it a buddy deal to start with, isn't the rpi founder ex-Broadcom?
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    Yes and yes, they make no secret of it.
  - __alexs 4y ago
    The original prototypes for an RPi like thing by Upton were ATMega based [1] but I imagine with Upton's connections to Broadcom it made some sense both technically and financially. 1: https://web.archive.org/web/20111024203123/http://www.raspberrypi.org/?p=264 https://web.archive.org/web/20111024203123/http://www.raspbe...
- trissylegs 4y ago
  Thing is nearly all the ARM-chip manufactures are similar or the same. One of the weird things about the Apple M chips (well at least on Laptops) is you can make the more open source than most ARM chips.
  - robotnikman 4y ago
    This is one of the reasons why I sort of dread the upcoming move to arm on desktops and laptops, despite the potential massive performance improvements. At least it seems like the industry will need to head that way if they want performance per watt on par with the Apple M chips.
trissylegs 4y ago
Linux in general has issues with Broadcom wifi. If you're shopping for a laptop to run linux. One of the biggest red flags for driver support is Broadcom wifi.
throwbcm 4y ago
The story as I heard it is: There original WRT54g that was the start of openWRT was BCM chip. BCM wrote a lot of the software, especially low level, as Cisco was their major customer at the time. Then Cisco got sued for GPL violations that were BCM's fault. Both companies were large and not too worried by lawsuits, but eventually it dawned on them that unlike the usual between businesses, they weren't just going to be able to settle by paying some money, because their antagonists were not in it for the money. They had to release the source, which both companies regarded as significantly part of their own IP. Cisco was pissed at BCM, BCM were upset that an external factor could piss off their major customer like this, and some high ranked individuals at BCM were butthurt about open source licenses having a say in their operations. So a policy was put in place that where significant R&D effort was made on software, in product lines those individuals controlled, it would be legally firewalled from open source licenses, even to the extent of designing future chip architectures so that there were extra processors, not running Linux, that would run features BCM wanted to keep proprietary. So that's why it's difficult to run open WRT on BCM chips. Caveat: I did not get this first or second hand.