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slycordinator
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
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Location: Houston, TX
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 Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 1:42 am Post subject: |
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| StarDragon wrote: |
How difficult would it be to release the code to the community?? |
If some of the code is owned by someone other than them they'd have problems. |
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artificio
Apprentice
Joined: 15 Sep 2004
Posts: 183
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:17 am Post subject: |
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| curtis119 wrote: | | Ha1f wrote: |
I doubt they'd let the Linux market share reach a point where a boycott by Linux users would actually affect (devastate) them financially before they started actually putting out drivers. They would/will do it as soon as it's legitimately profitable. |
Exactly. |
X3!
Put something on the petition about how you won't buy a VIA mainboard in the future unless they provide support or release specs. This is especially pertinent because while they may be in the lead WRT low power systems now, Intel and AMD will likely catch up and provide alternatives that have similar consumption/performance, in which case there will be other options for an economical consumer. |
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slycordinator
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
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Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:11 am Post subject: |
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| artificio wrote: | | Put something on the petition about how you won't buy a VIA mainboard in the future unless they provide support or release specs. |
That would only work if VIA regularly reads the petition.
Hint: They don't. |
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artificio
Apprentice
Joined: 15 Sep 2004
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 8:24 am Post subject: |
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How do you know they won't? My crystal ball's been on the fritz recently...  |
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nukem996
l33t
Joined: 13 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:28 am Post subject: |
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I'm currently working at a big hardware company and we're going through VIA hell as well. If you look on the site viaarena.com they have the source to many drivers but refuse to tell you the license but claim its not GPL. I had to escalate
this to our lawyers to get a clear answer from them since their engineers refuse to be helpful. I am trying to push via to support GNU/Linux better but so far I've heard nothing. I am trying to get them to contribute more to the community but they just don't understand the concept. I feel your pain but hopefully something will come out of this as well as what the company I work for is doing. |
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slycordinator
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
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Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 2:03 pm Post subject: |
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What are you "escalating to your lawyers" for? Your lawyers are probably gonna tell you that there's nothing illegal about not giving out your source code.
And if some of that code is actually owned by someone other than via, it would be illegal for via to give you the code in its present form. |
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nukem996
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Joined: 13 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:02 am Post subject: |
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Many of VIA's driver have the following code in it
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MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
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but when you ask what the license is they said it is NOT GPL and they only out that code in so it will compile on some distros like Fedora. Obviously the company I work for can't risk putting this driver out without knowing the license when doing a modinfo via_driver will show thats its GPL. |
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Dralnu
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Joined: 24 May 2006
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| Posted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | Many of VIA's driver have the following code in it
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MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
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but when you ask what the license is they said it is NOT GPL and they only out that code in so it will compile on some distros like Fedora. Obviously the company I work for can't risk putting this driver out without knowing the license when doing a modinfo via_driver will show thats its GPL. |
So basically you're getting your lawyers to look into them "releasing" their code as GPL, without using the GPL lisence?
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nukem996
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Joined: 13 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:09 am Post subject: |
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| No I'm actually getting our lawyers to tell them why because of this it needs to be GPL and I am asking that they submit all there code and patches upstream to the appropriate places(Linux, WPA supplicant, X.org, etc). So far we haven't heard anything back. The unfortunate part is that with the testing we have done all the code via writes sucks so even if it is officially released as GPL a lot of it will have to be rewritten. |
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curtis119
Bodhisattva
Joined: 10 Mar 2003
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Location: Toledo, OH, USA, North America, Earth, SOL System, Milky Way, The Universe, The Cosmos, and Beyond.
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:19 am Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | | No I'm actually getting our lawyers to tell them why because of this it needs to be GPL and I am asking that they submit all there code and patches upstream to the appropriate places(Linux, WPA supplicant, X.org, etc). So far we haven't heard anything back. The unfortunate part is that with the testing we have done all the code via writes sucks so even if it is officially released as GPL a lot of it will have to be rewritten. |
Then why do you care? Why are you trying? If VIA does not want our business....then do NOT give it to them. It truly is just that simple.
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nukem996
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:23 am Post subject: |
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| Not my call what hardware we use, I'm a software guy. All I can do is try to make the best out of it and try to help the community at the time. |
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curtis119
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Joined: 10 Mar 2003
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Location: Toledo, OH, USA, North America, Earth, SOL System, Milky Way, The Universe, The Cosmos, and Beyond.
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | | Not my call what hardware we use, I'm a software guy. All I can do is try to make the best out of it and try to help the community at the time. |
Hmmm, yeah I can see your point.
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StarDragon
Guru
Joined: 19 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | | all the code via writes sucks so even if it is officially released as GPL a lot of it will have to be rewritten. |
Yeah, that's what we get for buying crappy hardware  |
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slycordinator
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
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Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2008 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | | No I'm actually getting our lawyers to tell them why because of this it needs to be GPL and I am asking that they submit all there code and patches upstream to the appropriate places(Linux, WPA supplicant, X.org, etc). So far we haven't heard anything back. The unfortunate part is that with the testing we have done all the code via writes sucks so even if it is officially released as GPL a lot of it will have to be rewritten. |
1) They've told you that the code isn't GPL
2) You said that they added a line in the code saying it's GPL just to get it to compile in stuff like fedora which I assume means that in fedora you can't compile a driver that isn't GPL. So really that in itself doesn't prove it to be GPL so they don't have to submit their code to anyone
3) What patches will they be submitting? If they've written their own code and not modified someone else's, what is "upstream" in this case? If I write my own driver, I am the upstream.
4) If they write shit code and has to be rewritten anyway, why don't we just have people start doing open source replacements for their code? And the interesting thing is... this is already happening. |
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Dralnu
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Joined: 24 May 2006
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 4:15 am Post subject: |
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| slycordinator wrote: | | 4) If they write shit code and has to be rewritten anyway, why don't we just have people start doing open source replacements for their code? And the interesting thing is... this is already happening. |
probably because they can figure out how it works w/o having to reverse engineer the mess, and saving alot of time, especially when it comes to some features you may miss just trying to engineer it.
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nukem996
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Joined: 13 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 5:38 am Post subject: |
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| slycordinator wrote: |
2) You said that they added a line in the code saying it's GPL just to get it to compile in stuff like fedora which I assume means that in fedora you can't compile a driver that isn't GPL. So really that in itself doesn't prove it to be GPL so they don't have to submit their code to anyone
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Thats a GPL violation since it gives the driver access to GPL only kernel API calls.
| slycordinator wrote: |
3) What patches will they be submitting? If they've written their own code and not modified someone else's, what is "upstream" in this case? If I write my own driver, I am the upstream.
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They patch wpa supplicant for their wireless drivers
| slycordinator wrote: |
4) If they write shit code and has to be rewritten anyway, why don't we just have people start doing open source replacements for their code? And the interesting thing is... this is already happening.
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Unfortunately there is either no driver available other then the one VIA provides or the FOSS version has bugs. I tried OpenChrome today and I get random video corruption, in the upcoming week I'll be testing the closed source VIA video driver. |
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slycordinator
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Joined: 31 Jan 2004
Posts: 3050
Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Fri Feb 01, 2008 6:45 am Post subject: |
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| nukem996 wrote: | | slycordinator wrote: |
2) You said that they added a line in the code saying it's GPL just to get it to compile in stuff like fedora which I assume means that in fedora you can't compile a driver that isn't GPL. So really that in itself doesn't prove it to be GPL so they don't have to submit their code to anyone
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Thats a GPL violation since it gives the driver access to GPL only kernel API calls. |
Ah...
| Quote: | | slycordinator wrote: |
3) What patches will they be submitting? If they've written their own code and not modified someone else's, what is "upstream" in this case? If I write my own driver, I am the upstream.
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They patch wpa supplicant for their wireless drivers |
Wasn't aware of that.
| Quote: | | slycordinator wrote: |
4) If they write shit code and has to be rewritten anyway, why don't we just have people start doing open source replacements for their code? And the interesting thing is... this is already happening.
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Unfortunately there is either no driver available other then the one VIA provides or the FOSS version has bugs. I tried OpenChrome today and I get random video corruption, in the upcoming week I'll be testing the closed source VIA video driver. |
I didn't say that openchrome was a mature project... just that this kind of stuff is happening. |
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GNUtoo
Veteran
Joined: 05 May 2005
Posts: 1919
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| Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 10:26 pm Post subject: |
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how do they do in order to make the cloudbook work?
basicaly the cloudbook is a little bit like the eeePC but with via hardware such as:
*VIA UniChrome™ Pro IGP
* 1.2GHz VIA C7-M
*30GB hard disk and 5h of battery life(i didn't saw another one with theses caracteristics for such size and such price(not 2000 Euros/dollars))
*512MB ram
they run gOS(google OS, an ubuntu-like distribution but with enlightenment ) but i wonder how usable is it if it has so bad drivers... |
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