The forbidden topic: Glamo OpenGL

Wolfgang Spraul wolfgang at openmoko.com
Fri Nov 14 11:11:30 CET 2008


Jacob,
Glamo is not a forbidden topic.

Openmoko actually has learnt a lot from this. First we have learnt to  
not trust high-level promises as much as before.
In fact I would go as far as saying that going forward, we will not  
trust any promises about 'we will open this up later' anymore.
Either it's open and documented at the time we make the decision to  
use those chips, or we look elsewhere.
I believe that's what our customers want.

We have a long way to go to come out with kick-ass open phone  
hardware, but if our community doesn't loose faith and continues to do  
development together with us, we'll get there. The momentum we have  
built with the Freerunner is awesome. Please continue to buy  
Freerunners and to develop for it, same is happening internally. The  
next phones will build on top of the free platform we have built  
together, the technology investment will carry over.

Having said that, if someone wants to seriously develop for the glamo,  
please get in touch with me and we will find a legally correct way to  
extend the smedia documentation to you.
In fact we have done that in a few cases before already, but I'm not  
sure how much actual codes have come out of that. I think very  
little ;-)
So we need some really serious coders that don't mind a tough challenge.

Best Regards,
Wolfgang

On Nov 14, 2008, at 6:48 AM, Jacob Peterson wrote:

> Sorry to drag this old, over discussed topic up again.  However, I  
> am concerned that if action is not taken soon then all GTA02 owners  
> will be left without any real chance to ever get anything in the way  
> of OpenGL support.  So I ask the question, what is Openmoko's  
> position on writing an OpenGL driver for the Glamo chip or at least  
> aiding developers with some form of documentation?
>
> I have read speculation that it may be possible to do something such  
> as rewrite the documents to get around the NDA.  Since it seems  
> rather clear that SMedia has no intention to release the documents  
> to anyone else under NDA, it is solely up to Openmoko to write the  
> driver or at least aid any community members with the ability to  
> write such a driver.
>
> Hopefully there is something that can be done, or better yet,  
> something is currently being done on this.
>
> Regards,
> Jacob
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