Pandora 3d Chip Questions When Working?

[Zoxc]

I will atleast use the 2D hardware for Scale. The pixel shaders are also neat for effects you usually would have to do on the CPU. Here is an example: http://rapidshare.com/files/171457018/pixelshader.mp4

 

[hch]

Yes, GPL is designed to increase the freedom of the users at the expense of the freedom of the programmers.

and what might be the difference if i may ask? creating a fence between money earning professionals and deprived consumers is the mindset of proprietary software companies.

do i really need to explain this here in the forums of an open source, community 'designed' device with a lot of 'homebrew' users?


Maybe. Just because you can freely install whatever binaries you want on your machines doesn't mean that the software has to be open source, much less GPL. If you ask me, a lot of people have interpreted the spirit of open source as the right to demand that every developer (even ones doing so for free) give them their source code or else, and start claiming that they're being "deprived" otherwise. You're not. No one owes you anything. I'm sorry if you thought this platform was "open" in that its hardware would be 100% publicly documented with open source drivers for everything - if you did then you were wrong.

Like many things that people are passionate about, I think that their opponents would be more receptive to their cause if they were a little less zealous, hostile, condescending, and dogmatic about it. I'm not singling you out, not for what was a pretty mild gesture on your part, but responding to what has been a widescale phenomenon of people insisting that their misguided sense of entitlement has been breached when they don't get to see someone's source and make modifications (regardless of whether or not they have legitimate application in mind for either). Rather than accept that some people will, for various reasons, not want to put something under the GPL (possibly under a more restrictive license that still makes code visible), many of GPL's ardent supporters seem to cut themselves off from the "proprietary supporters" and then operate under the assumption that everyone within their selected communities has embraced their religious vows. Several times now have I seen the sentiment of "it's not a good thing to encourage more people to use Linux if they're going to be using closed source software on it." For many open source seems to be a lot more than a practical decision, it's an ideal. I've literally known people who have said that free software is the most important cause in the world to them - I have even known one person who has said that it's as strong as any kind of religious faith; he said it was his reason for living. It's understandable why people like this would want to be amongst communities that exclusively share this ideal.

But this isn't one of those communities.


wow, thanks for the long reply. it seems that i really didn't get my point across very well. i am very far from condemning non-GPL code. in fact, writing such code is part of what i do for a living.

the only one sentiment that i wanted to express is this: the GPL does not deprive the coder of any freedom. everyone is free to licence their code as they please. the only thing the GPL demands is that if you heavily build on the work of others and want to distribute your *and* their work, then you must also allow others to build on your work, too. you are still free to publish your own work under whatever licence you please in addition. or you can choose to base your work on different prior work of others and obey their conditions of redistribution. or you can reinvent the wheel all by yourself of course.

you may perceive the restriction of freedom as a coder if you strictly divide people into coders and users - this is what i read in the message i was replying to. the argument seemed to go something like that: the GPL forces the coder into opening up their own work therefore depriving her of the ability to sell the code. this is an extermely strange argument to me, as it somehow seems to imply that on the one hand coders should have access to all code ever written and then being allowed to sell it to 'consumers'. in my personal opinion this is an attitude that reflects a general trend in society to deprive the large majority of people of a certain good (in this case access to code) and let them be content with a black box where they can pour money into and get out some services for a price set by a tiny minority of people that set up this black box. this is my personal opinion, think about it what you want.

now the pandora is a kind of community designed device with a lot of 'homebrew' gamers. i honestly thought that it would be somewhat obvious to the audience here, what a refreshingly different path is offered by just sharing your code and cooking things up yourself as a mere 'user'. in fact, being new here, i had the impression that this actually was kind of the lifeblood of this community. and the GPL is in my opinion just the legal realization of this spirit.

i don't care about a closed source device driver if it does the work. and i am happy for every commercial title available on the pandora (or linux in general). it just always seems to happen to me, that i have a very special use case that is not covered by commercial titles very well. if i could choose, the very first thing i'd like on the pandora was mathematica. now how realistic is that? the open source cousin maxima is within reach however if just a standard linux distro gets ported. maybe i have to fudge around a bit to get it running, but there is the source code. and if i should be successful, i can share the result and there is one more app running. this, for me, is the very practical power of the GPL.

 

[Tor]

I believe he means a GPL (Open source) driver that relies on a binary blob. Ie, the kernel driver itself is open source, but the confidential/trade secret parts are closed source. The last bit doesn't matter however, as you only need the GPL source to keep the driver upto date with newer kernel releases. [..]

If the above is indeed the case (binary blob+interface source), then this is disappointing. But not any worse than we expected before. In any case the use of the word is 'GPL' here is incorrect, and Craigx' post is also incorrect. The open source driver around the binary blob isn't GPL, it is, as Chip clarified, "GPL compliant" which is something quite different.

The way the original posting was worded we had all reason to understand it as a GPL'ed driver, which it isn't, if Squidge is right.

So, nothing new here, nothing to see, except that we've been informed about a time frame.

 

[lardman]

QUOTE
In any case the use of the word is 'GPL' here is incorrect, and Craigx' post is also incorrect. The open source driver around the binary blob isn't GPL, it is, as Chip clarified, "GPL compliant" which is something quite different.


How so? The wrapper source is provided and you can alter it if you want to (for example to interface with different kernel versions with different APIs), and it's got a GPL licence. How is this not GPL?

Obviously the combination of the wrapper + closed source blob is not GPL in totality, but due to the wrapper being GPL the entire driver becomes GPL compliant wrt the kernel, but you're talking about the wrapper alone in your post.

 

[maciek_urbanski]

This (off topic) discussion is IMHO without merit.

There's no chance that Imagination Technology will change its licensing terms (TI, Intel, HTC, all have the same terms), so we'll end-up with binary blob no matter what.

They do not break any laws, so we have no way to force them to open-up the user-mode implementation.

I agree it's not in the 'spirit' of open source, but it does not break GPL.

So instead of talking about things we cannot change, maybe we could talk about the ones we can ? (pointing to my API-related question above).

 

[Tor]

How so? The wrapper source is provided and you can alter it if you want to (for example to interface with different kernel versions with different APIs), and it's got a GPL licence. How is this not GPL?

Obviously the combination of the wrapper + closed source blob is not GPL in totality, but due to the wrapper being GPL the entire driver becomes GPL compliant wrt the kernel, but you're talking about the wrapper alone in your post.

Actually, you're right and I'm wrong about that particular point - you can have gpl code using an encapsulated abi. The original posting was a bit misleading though - I for one understood it as a fully GPL'ed driver (thus my 'excellent news!' reply..)

 

[VRAndy]

Sorry to continue an off-topic discussion, but I can't resist answering a direct question.

Yes, GPL is designed to increase the freedom of the users at the expense of the freedom of the programmers.
and what might be the difference if i may ask? creating a fence between money earning professionals and deprived consumers is the mindset of proprietary software companies. The difference between what? Users and programmers?
The users' freedom is increased by giving them the freedom to tinker, to be able to audit the logic of the software they use, and various other benefits along those lines. The whole "If I can't open it I don't really own it" mentality.
The freedom of people wishing to create and distribute software (I'll admit I over-simplified when I just said 'programmers') is reduced by the obvious means of having a complicated and restrictive license to deal with.

It's entirely possible for a person to wear two hats, obviously, but it doesn't change my underlying point that there's two distinct sets of freedoms that are somewhat at odds with each other.

QUOTE
do i really need to explain this here in the forums of an open source, community 'designed' device with a lot of 'homebrew' users?
Uh, actually I didn't understand your point, so perhaps you do, But maybe you just misunderstood mine, I didn't mean to manufacture a division, just point out one of those great trade-offs of life.


I think I've been miss-understood. I'm not a GPL zealot. I create closed-source software for a living, often use windows, etc.

 

[mali]

@maciek
You should make a poll in the dev's corner

 

[efegea]

Driver is out!

Look at Tom Cooksey's thread on dev's corner

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=45664

 

[cb88]

just the kernel portion of the driver... no blob yet I don't think is there?

no... wait.. (Edited overzealousness ) nope isn't you still need to get dirvers from ImgTEch or TI