Openmoko strives for openness (smedia glamo)

Lorn Potter lpotter at trolltech.com
Thu Apr 3 00:01:59 CEST 2008


On Wednesday 02 April 2008 18:32, Tom Cooksey wrote:
> On Sunday 30 March 2008 13:42:23 Harald Welte wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 07:46:52PM +0100, joerg wrote:
> > > Am Do  27. März 2008 schrieb Lally Singh:
> > > > On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Andy Green <andy at openmoko.com> 
wrote:
> > > > > Somebody in the thread at some point said:
> > > > >  >> 2. Actually, is there any hope of getting 3d acceleration out
> > > > >  >> of the graphics chip, or is that too bogged down with NDA-ness?
> > > > >  >>  Are we stuck porting Mesa3D?
> > > > >
> > > > >  Chance, sure, but the NDA situation is pretty bad it turns out for
> > > > > the Glamo.
> > > >
> > > > It's a shame!  Poor (Glamo) fools are shooting themselves in the foot
> > > > on this one.
> > >
> > > full ACK! Anyway there's hope, there were volunteers on one of the
> > > lists yesterday, who might be willing to sign a NDA.
> >
> > Please note though, that being one of the persons who drafted the
> > wording on the contract between Smedia and OpenMoko: The contract
> > contains explicit provisions for OpenMoko preparing a set of
> > documentation for the Glamo chip, not carbon-copying from the original
> > NDA'd docs, and then cooperating with Smedia to jointly release that
> > new manual.
> >
> > However, I doubt that given the current load and priority situation,
> > there would be anyone doing paid work on that set of new documentation.
>
> As one (perhaps only one?) who volunteered to start work on a DRM driver 

This was already looked at by me, as the one who is doing the Neo Qtopia port. 
Looked at least for a Qt embedded gfxplugin.

 
> for the glamo (the first step to 3D), I can confirm that the NDA OpenMoko
> has with SMedia prevents them from releasing any docs to 3rd parties,
> with or without an NDA.
>
> So, yes, I'm willing to sign an NDA to get the docs to write a driver. This
> was to be done in my own time and for free. 

I would have done it on Trolltech's time. :)

> As OpenMoko isn't allowed 
> to release the docs to me at all, even if I do sign an NDA, I have to go to
> SMedia. Sadly, as Lorn has pointed out, SMedia wants $15,000 before
> they will release the docs under NDA. As this was going to be a personal
> project, I have no intention of forking out $15,000 of my own money to
> write a driver.
>
> I've been in discussion with my managers here in Trolltech to see if the
> company would put up the cash and perhaps even pay me a little to do
> it. Sadly we've all agreed that this would take too much time away from
> my other work and there is other hardware which already have drivers I
> can work with.

This is what we already came to the conclusion of within 3 seconds of reading 
smedia's offer.


-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech





More information about the community mailing list