Thread: Open source hardware drivers for Nokia tablets problematics
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Stskeeps is offline Stskeeps
2011-06-02 , 11:09
Posts: 1,671 | Thanked: 11,478 times | Joined on Jun 2008 @ Warsaw, Poland
#1
Originally Posted by momcilo View Post
Yes I have to do my homework.

Stskeeps, you may notice that in many ways I share some level of agreement with abill_uk on this topic.

As for misconceptions, please note that what I am asking is not the following:
N900 (hardware is not of interest) + Meego + closed propriatory bits of nokia + closed propitiatory bits of third parties

I am asking for the following:
open source hardware drivers for all of the device (770, 800, 810, 900 and maybe future device).

Yes you have provided the status of these components for n900, not for the other devices. You have stated we should be safe with closed source drivers, but have you ever had a machine with Broadcom wifi module, and did you ever experience the reliability of a similarly designed blobs?

I have, if you didn't you may want to spend some time in exploring how this really works in reality.

In short I simply want fully open platform DEVICE+DRIVERS+OS
Yes, I've had devices like that and am well aware of the problems with this. This is also one reason we're actively trying to open source what we can of the N900 stuff (before MeeGo, there was even no open source telephony stack), but let's face it - there's too much money in embedded still. There's much to be gained from hardware manufacturers such as ImgTec(SGX) and others to keep their IPR/source closed.

I won't go into N8x0, 770 as the situation is much worse there than on the N900. On N8x0, BME, GPS, Battery charging, WiFi is closed source.

I can't help but wonder - If you want a fully open platform, why did you buy a device that has known hardware components that only has support for it through closed source binaries?

At least our kernel has no closed source modules.

My stance is that well-maintained closed source redistributable binaries are better than none at all. And even with those binaries, we actively try to see what we reasonably can get open sourced.

Redistributable SGX drivers (libraries) were a win, compared to the crap situation before.
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