Direct Answers From Gamepark About Gpl Etc...

[gHeTTo cHiLd]

Well I wanted to get answers to some questions that pop up on the boards frequently without getting real answers 'all speculative'. So I mailed anna@gp2x.com like so :

----- Original Message -----
From: Walter Schreppers
To: anna@gp2x.com
Sent: Saturday, November 19, 2005 2:03 AM
Subject: A few questions about gp2x

Hi,

I noticed your very promising gp2x product and would like to ask a few questions:

1. We are especially interested (apart from the nice existing gaming/media functionalities) in attaching usb periferals such as wifi and external storage for use in student robotics projects.
Now I do understand the current exposed usb 2.0 connection is 'slave' only but according to the specification there is a 1.1 usb 'host' on-chip capability. Is it at all possible
to access this hardware feature(with or without opening the unit)? Are there plans in future units to allow some kind of line on the circuit board to make accessing usb 1.1 'host' easily possible or will this never happen?

2. There seem to be a lot of rumours going around about breaking of GPL, since the device is linux based and the kernel sources are not being released up to this date.
I can understand there might be proprietary code involved that can't be released but will parts of the modified/patched kernel (without the proprietary code) ever be released to the public in the future? Or will GPH continue to ignore the GPL issue?

3. Though stated on the site that video playback of 6 hours is possible. On the forums people state around 1.5 to 2 hours in practice (with 2500 NiMH). What effective playback times can we expect with the latest firmware?

Kind regards,
Walter



-----------------------------------

Okay and here the answers from Gamepark :

--------------------------

Hi Mr. Schreppers,

1. As you may notice, GP2X design is of low-powered circuit so that it cannot support USB hosting, WiFi, WIBRO etc.
We are considering to develop upgraded version wth medium-powered circuit design allowing above features.
But we do not have specific time frame in the near future.

2. We were and are busy launching GP2X and stabilizing Firmwares.
In the near future, we will open some sources that are not critical in terms of protection of intellectual property.

3. According to our own test, it lasted 3 hours and 5 minutes of video play.
We are upgrading Firmware to extend it to 4 hours in the near future.

Best Regards,

Kyutae Hwang

----------------------------

 

[iignotus]

Hope that "Intellectual Property" is in kernel modules...

We're already getting more than 4 hours with some batteries. Guess that means even longer Too bad they still said "6 Hours Video/10 Hours Music" in their initail (and still-current) advert.

 

[Cyclops]

what is 2 about? The chip is Magiceyes, the software as far as I can see is all GPL. As far as I can see they don't have an awful lot of IP. Which I think is the problem.

I think "near future" needs a date, and clarity of what they think is their IP. Has anyone actually asked them

 

[Auritribe]

what is 2 about? The chip is Magiceyes, the software as far as I can see is all GPL. As far as I can see they don't have an awful lot of IP. Which I think is the problem.

I think "near future" needs a date, and clarity of what they think is their IP. Has anyone actually asked them

​

Possibily the DRM for commercial games? They wouldn't want to make it even easier to crack.

 

[lucoxade]

what is 2 about? The chip is Magiceyes, the software as far as I can see is all GPL. As far as I can see they don't have an awful lot of IP. Which I think is the problem.

​

The drivers for the SD slot will be closed source.

 

[weirdspawningkid]

You emailed Anna Hong and got a reply from Kyutae Hwang. How does that work, oh and if you look at the sd wiki it's a bit of a facist format in terms of source rights etc.



we gotta get outta here-

 

[MiniMoose]

The drivers for the SD slot will be closed source.

​

If this is the case they better give us SDIO support in those drivers. Oh yeah, and they better come as a binary kernel module or I'm going to support suing them for violating the GPL.

 

[sand_man]

>>You emailed Anna Hong and got a reply from Kyutae Hwang.

Anna is just the poster child

 

[Vimacs]

yeah, go and sue the only company that actualy listens to customers and are the only ones brave enugh to aktualy make exctly the product we want.
FUCKING GREAT IDEAR!

 

[DijiTao]

It is a bit soon to be working up to a fevered pitch about a GPL violation , but nice company or not, if come mid January they're still talking about releasing the source code "soon", I think you have to take action. Violating the GPL is a pretty serious offense in my eyes. I have a bad feeling in my gut about this already thou - I don't think they quite understand what they got themselves into by using the Linux kernel. They better understand that any code that links to GPL’d code becomes GPL’d code. Of course the really stupid part about all this is that releasing the code is in their best interest since it will simply result in the community doing a better job of improving it then they ever could.

 

[jdwrrzmm]

Am I the only one really sad to hear that there is a good chance that you can't add a self powered external host hard drive to it?

 

[Cyclops]

It is a bit soon to be working up to a fevered pitch about a GPL violation , but nice company or not, if come mid January they're still talking about releasing the source code "soon", I think you have to take action. Violating the GPL is a pretty serious offense in my eyes. I have a bad feeling in my gut about this already thou - I don't think they quite understand what they got themselves into by using the Linux kernel. They better understand that any code that links to GPL’d code becomes GPL’d code. Of course the really stupid part about all this is that releasing the code is in their best interest since it will simply result in the community doing a better job of improving it then they ever could.

​

Its always too soon to be getting worked up into a fever pitch. I don't want anyone sued. I think they need to release the source. As of last week it became important to me. I don't want to use fat32 ever! It has become time for negotiation by a professional. This is going to come back and haunt GPH if they are not careful. They have a nice product at the moment, I don't want bad press over this noncence

 

[gp2brew]

It is a bit soon to be working up to a fevered pitch about a GPL violation , but nice company or not, if come mid January they're still talking about releasing the source code "soon", I think you have to take action. Violating the GPL is a pretty serious offense in my eyes. I have a bad feeling in my gut about this already thou - I don't think they quite understand what they got themselves into by using the Linux kernel. They better understand that any code that links to GPL’d code becomes GPL’d code. Of course the really stupid part about all this is that releasing the code is in their best interest since it will simply result in the community doing a better job of improving it then they ever could.

​

Exactly the point I'd attempted to make. From this response it's clear they don't understand the GPL, and in a situation like this it rarely turns out pretty.

No-one here is talking about sueing GPH, but believe me when I say that there are people in the Linux and open source world who aren't going to take this lightly, idealistic open source homebrew platform or not.

That's a shame, because if GPH don't respect the GPL, they are going to have their reputation tarnished globally and it could very much affect the market for the GP2X. All of this could be avoided if they only had done some research into the license and the software before they adopted it.

Also, by the word of the GPL, the product has been released now even if GPH say the official release is not until January. Distribution is distribution. If it were sitting in their factory until January that would be a different matter.

Right now, even with their claim that they are protecting their IP (which as DijiTao points out is actually GPL most likely now anyway) they are violating Magic Eyes GPL. They have no right to do this, and that *could* get them sued.

Honestly, I'm as for the GP2X as anyone here, I love the concept, and I love the idealism behind it. What's going on now though, could show that not everyone at GPH has the same ideals as this community does and that just because they are making a console that suits our purposes does NOT mean they are doing so for this community.

At some point, if this is not resolved along with some other issues, I think even this incredibly forgiving community will start to get jack of this. Some time before then, new members attracted by Linux inside and the larger global open source community are going to get very jack of this.

Perhaps it is time to organise an effort to educate GPH before it comes to that?

 

[Cyclops]

No it wasn't the point you made. The point you made was Linux is rubbish, use HH, and then posted a thead on GPL like it mattered to you that Linux was not available to you. As someone who deperately want to play with linux on a handheld gaming machine. I found it very annoying and counterproductive.

*something* needs to be done now. I'm saying that and I don't care about GPL.

 

[gp2brew]

No it wasn't the point you made. The point tou made was Linux is rubbish, use HH, and then posted a thead on GPL like it mattered to you that Linux was not available to you. As someone who deperately want to play with linux on a handheld gaming machine. I found it very annoying and counterproductive.

​

Get over it and stop trashing threads. Thanks.

 

[Cyclops]

Get over it and stop trashing threads. Thanks.

​

Then don't lie, remember this is something I care about.

 

[judge0]

If I interpreted this article correctly, I don't think we are going to gain anything in regards to SDIO development from GPH releasing their source to us anyway.

As a matter of fact, it probably explains why some problems exist with the SD system.

To me, it sounds like the SD system is provided by a binary only driver module. :angry:

 

[gHeTTo cHiLd]

If I interpreted this article correctly, I don't think we are going to gain anything in regards to SDIO development from GPH releasing their source to us anyway.

As a matter of fact, it probably explains why some problems exist with the SD system.

To me, it sounds like the SD system is provided by a binary only driver module. :angry:

​

Well again I don't think this is the case, don't rememer where I read it but I'm pretty sure they just took a kernel and patched everything directly in it (not in the modules, don't actually have a unit yet to check it, so don't flame me if I'm wrong). Someone else already stated it : 'I don't think GPH knows what it got itself into by using GPL code'. I'm of the same reasoning that's why I formulated my question this exact way. Bla bla 'without proprietary code' bla. The thing is they don't seem to understand that they have to release all source code changes they made to the GPL kernel whether this compromises copy protection or not. Use GPL code to start from then the resulting code is GPL, it's that simple...

As to the reason I got a reply from some other guy instead of 'Anna' well euhm need I really explain that?

As for the one post where they say 'I won't be able to connect my HD' yes you're right, you won't be able to, again a pretty bad design choice made by GPH. Only way is connecting a 'host' or OTG capable device which will most likely be too expensive.

In short, sorry but I know people will react to this one .

I'm starting to question what GP2X has as an advantage over the PSP. See the PSP pro's

PSP pros:
1. has usb 'host' capabilities (connecting of HD's is possible, though usb is not powered but can be solved with simple mods to the usb cable...).
2. Plenty of homebrew, even now with the newer 2.0 firmwares already downgrading to 1.5 is possible and even some homebrew code is possible on 2.0
Emulators, wel there is already a really good functioning UAE, NES, SNES, NeoCD etc. for it. Also I might add the emulators are already much ahead, UAE for example running nearly without frameskips...
And plenty of other custom games / apps etc. have been made. Eventually I also see it running linux much as happened with the gameboy advance...
4. Wifi, yep it's got wifi.
5. Commercial support (if you want you can even have nice commercial games on it).
6. SDK, they've got it, okay they had to reverse engineer it by using some headers etc. but still coding is just as easy for the PSP-homebrew as for the GP2X at the moment, trust me...
7. 3D accelleration, in 2005 it's pretty common to have that by the way...

GP2X pros:
1. It runs linux : but what the hell are we with it without the sources, it's buggy uses too much battery power etc....

2. Well I'm thinking, but euhm what does it have for advantages we were 'promised' by the advertising: movies divx, xvid etc. without reencoding : yes this would have been very nice but in practice : just as hard to watch a movie on the GP2x as on the PSP sorry guys, even you can buy (or download as torrent) a correctly-encoded UMD disk if you're lasy for PSP... Everyone knows your not gonna reencode every movie just to watch it on that tiny screen. It should be how it's advertised. You have a file, dump it on the gp2x and watch it. That's what I do with my MythTV box, also running linux/mplayer and it handles all my movies without a hassle, that is what I expect from the gp2x. I mean cummon, there has to be 1 aspect on this console that makes it better than a psp an I hoped it would have been the ability to play media files of different formats. Not the ability to drain batteries quickly

3. TV-Out, yes this is a major plus for me too. Again, nobody has seen it working up to this date have we? And again, already there are PSP mods to do tv-out as well.

4. Extra hardware mods: well I've seen PSP mods for that too... Even the gameboy advance has robotics mods etc... And again, it is all speculation up to now, sure it can be done in the future (same as SDIO/wifi which for me seems a pipedream). But like I said on the other consoles it has already been done now. So why buy something that 'might' do it in the future when you can have a console that does it 'now'?


What it boils down to is that the PSP and/or gameboy community is just so much larger than the gp2x'es at the moment.
If gp2x delivers what they promise in their adds, then yes it is still a good product. (releasing their source code + working on media formats support). If they don't release their source code and don't get the firmware to any state near what the advertise well I'll see the gp2x dying faster than that famed (nice looking as well) zaurus console. Community will not embrase it if they ignore GPL, why should they?

 

[gaterooze]

Errr... the GP2X hasn't even "officially" been released yet, and it already has SNES, NES, NeoGeoCD, C64 and Atari800 emulators, plus Quake I & II, Hexen, etc.

The GP32 took over a year to have much decent on it, and IMHO even a GP32 BLU is *much* better than a PSP for playing emulated games. It just feels, controls and looks far better, and everything under SNES has better emulators on GP32 anyway.

Judging from the great start (more software than expected by now, just have to fix the firmware properly, or get an open source replacement) in six months the GP2X will be so far ahead of the PSP no one will look back.

 

[gHeTTo cHiLd]

Errr... the GP2X hasn't even "officially" been released yet, and it already has SNES, NES, NeoGeoCD, C64 and Atari800 emulators, plus Quake I & II, Hexen, etc.

The GP32 took over a year to have much decent on it, and IMHO even a GP32 BLU is *much* better than a PSP for playing emulated games. It just feels, controls and looks far better, and everything under SNES has better emulators on GP32 anyway.

Judging from the great start (more software than expected by now, just have to fix the firmware properly, or get an open source replacement) in six months the GP2X will be so far ahead of the PSP no one will look back.

​

Yes true, it does seem to be getting a great start (thanx to the great OSS community behind it, not the company). I'll wait and see and might change my mind when the official release is there... Still, they have to obey the GPL for me to be happy .