Yummy new CPU/GPU combo

Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) raster at openmoko.org
Wed Jun 4 02:01:58 CEST 2008


On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 13:15:05 -0700 "Steven Kurylo" <sk at infinitepigeons.org>
babbled:

> > Google does contribute to various open source projects, but they sure as
> > hell don't seem to drink the punch.
> >
> > Thanks for the info, that completely defines my view of Android.
> 
> The kernel still uses the GPL, so they have to respect that.  However
> the new hardware drivers could be done the same way nvidia does it.
> 
> They said their custom software will all use the apache license.  So a
> phone carrier could take the software stack, close the source, and add
> their custom bits on top leaving you with a system thats just as
> closed as the current phones.  It will be interesting to see what
> happens.

what a lot of people miss is - a lot of important "drivers" can and do get done
in userspace - graphics (x) for example. gsm etc. (you need to talk to a serial
device - but the protocol specs may or may not be published - in our case its
a standard at commandset - but it may not be). same with a lot of usb devices -
they may register as a device - but how to make it do things - requires knowing
the higher level protocol. sure. debugging/reverse engineering the info out of
it would become easier, but - it doesn't need to be in the kernel and thus can
be any license you like, so there are many ways to avoid the kernel's gpl. not
for all things - but quite possibly for key important things (gsm or graphics
or input devices etc.).

> > And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux?  My god - that
> > beggars the imagination.
> 
> I think he's talking about other applications.  I think picasa uses wine.

and google earth

-- 
Carsten Haitzler (The Rasterman) <raster at openmoko.org>




More information about the community mailing list