Am 02.02.2015 um 23:35 schrieb Paul Kocialkowski: >>>> ²>> the main entrance but inside from about 11:45 to 12:00 holding in >>>>>> front of >>>>>> me a sign with the OpenPhoenux logo. >>>>> >>>>> I'll be there, and I guess Paul will read this as well. I'll wear my >>>>> phone around my neck for identification. >>>> >>>> Sure, count me in as well! >>> >>> I waited for about half an hour at the indicated location, with Christ >>> who had to leave at some point. Eventually, I gave up and grabbed lunch >>> on my own. >>> >>> Thankfully, we were able to chat a bit after my talk! >> >> sorry that I could not visit FOSDEM this year and did miss your talk. >> But I am curious how it was. >> >> And how the FOSDEM generally was. Anything interesting to share >> with our community? > > As usual, FOSDEM was a nice event to be a part of! However, it is a bit > sad that the people working on creating embedded devices that truly push > free software to the next level were under-represented this year. > In particular, I'm thinking about the OpenPhoenux community (Goldelico > with the GTA04, Neo900) as well as the DragonBox Pyra, Novena and all > the board makers that use Allwinner, i.MX, OMAP chips. Thus, I felt that > the discussions around the embedded devroom were not very > freedom-oriented. Overall, I had a feeling that talking about freedom > and the core values of why we're doing all this is going away, which is > sad because it didn't feel the same last year. > > This is only true in part, because I had very interesting discussions > with graphics people who truly believe this is the right way to go, so > that was refreshing. > > We also discussed a bit how to get more support from companies and there > is a lot to say there because obviously, not every company out there > acts like TI by providing extensive documentation and direct support > form their engineers to the community. Tsvetan from Olimex talked about > his experience with Allwinner during the round table fill-in session we > had during John Sullivan's slot (his talk had been cancelled). > > The point was that most of those companies (especially the Asian ones) > don't care about free software (and often neglect most of the legal > aspects of it). They are interested in making money before anything and > producing upstream quality code costs them a lot of money and doesn't > apparently bring any significant advantage. Apparently, only very big > companies like Intel, Samsung and others can afford to have people > dedicated to writing quality free software support for their hardware. > Even writing documentation to give free software developers has an > enormous cost. > > Now there are different ways to react to that (which is exactly what the > linux-sunxi community faced). I do agree with Luc Verhaegen's approach > of complaining as loudly as possible when the chip maker does not > release the source code it has to release (e.g. kernel bits) under the > GPL terms. Such violations do not require any more code to be written, > just will for the company to release them, so I do agree that pressuring > them to release those bits is the only reasonable thing to do. This is > an attack towards our community and there is no reason to be kind of > quiet about it. > > Now when it comes to getting the company to take part in the community, > there are different approaches that could make it work and I'm not sure > which is best. Apparently in the graphics area, customers pressuring the > PR department combined with the fact that competitors are doing it too > can give some results (at least, it's starting to work with nVidia). > > For instance, Imagination Technologies (PowerVR maker) is now selling > their MIPS CI-20 single board computer that has a PowerVR series 5 chip > which requires proprietary software for graphics acceleration and 3D. > Since Img Tech is selling that board directly, there is a direct > customer relation with us so we can pressure their public relationships > department to ask for change (the guy's name is Alexandru Voica). So > please, if you feel like getting one of those CI-20 boards (they're > actually not so bad for software freedom, see: > https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers) and complain to > Img Tech afterwards for the lack of free graphics support, please do > (they're actually pretty cheap too)!
Hi Paul! Thanks for the summary and also for your great talk [0]! I think it gives a very good overview of the current situation of the Replicant project and the problems it faces (e.g. closed hardware). Do you know if there was a recording of the talk? Will it be published? Best, Lukas [0] https://fosdem.org/2015/schedule/event/replicant_embedded_freedom/attachments/slides/734/export/events/attachments/replicant_embedded_freedom/slides/734/Reached_milestones_and_ongoing_development_on_Replicant.pdf
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