Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by the_biot on Thursday December 23, 2021 @11:35AM
(#29663489)
Good point. That page says the BSP ships with a GCC-produced driver blob, without source. Would be good to hear from the Pine64 folks on whether they've contacted the vendor and demanded source.
Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by rbanffy on Thursday December 23, 2021 @02:05PM
(#29665237)
Maybe asking politely and offering help would work better. It’s entirely possible the blob was never cleared for release as source.
In the distant past I was hired to provide programs in binary form and many clients refused to pay more for source.
Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by CameronNemo on Thursday December 23, 2021 @02:31PM
(#29665543)
Or, you can just avoid vendors who make you beg for open source drivers.
Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by rbanffy on Thursday December 23, 2021 @03:14PM
(#29665969)
How many competitive ARM SoC vendors that have good software higiene out there?
Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by CameronNemo on Thursday December 23, 2021 @04:01PM
(#29666425)
Who says I have to buy an ARM SoC. I can always just check out and keep using second hand devices. Or something from Intel, if I need more power.
And to answer your question, two come to mind, NXP and Amlogic.
Re:PineNote Developer Edition – E-Paper Tablet
by rbanffy on Friday December 24, 2021 @03:26AM
(#29671559)
Are we still talking about Pine64?
As for blobs without source, the same happens with x86 all the time. If you really want a fully deblobbed computer, you can try one of the POWER boxes from Raptor.
Of course there has been no progress on reverse engineering the epaper display driver in the past three months. Furthermore it is questionable why anyone would need to RE it, considering that the driver is in-kernel. The assembly file that rockchip shipped with their sdk seems like a GPL violation to me.