At Least Intel Admits They Have Too Many Drivers

[droidhacker]

The part that is really confusing in this whole mess is JUST WHO is writing all the different drivers?

If it is INTEL writing all the drivers, then they could release the source just fine.

If it is TUNGSTEN writing all the drivers, then if THEY had a brain, then all the different drivers are actually the SAME DRIVER with a little glue that was written by INTEL, in which case intel could at least release the GLUE.

Either way, intel can release SOMETHING. Especially now since they HAVE released at least THREE sets of binaries and two sets of glue.... psb (inc. glue), iegd (inc. glue), and pvr (for "PowerVR", not "Personal Video Recorder" --- no glue). Now once again, EMGD is supposed to come with glue, which is good, but this NDA nonsense is B.S. HOW EXACTLY can anyone justify the cost of developing a driver that NOBODY CAN USE??!??!?!?!? Frikkin retarded is what it is.

[droidhacker]

Just a note for anyone running FEDORA... there are now psb driver packages on rpmfusion-nonfree-updates-testing that are compatible with xserver 1.8 and kernel 2.6.33 -- this is thanks to Adam Will of Fedora (hobby work, NOT official), and several other people who work mostly on ubuntu.

[agd5f]

With NDAs and specs, anyone can write a driver for a particular chip, however, you can't release what you've written unless the owner of the IP says you can. The owner of the IP can also make restrictions on redistribution even if it is in binary form.

[droidhacker]

With NDAs and specs, anyone can write a driver for a particular chip, however, you can't release what you've written unless the owner of the IP says you can. The owner of the IP can also make restrictions on redistribution even if it is in binary form.

IF they changed the blob enough that the glue would require any additional IP compared to the glue that they *already* released. Which I suppose is possible, but very badly though out. Not that ANY PART of intel's operation appears to be reasonably thought out

In fact, under the NDA's, Intel actually does have the full source code for all of the different SGX drivers applicable to hardware they sell... which means that they *could*/*should* arrange the blob portion such that it doesn't require any additional IP to be opened than what already is.

As for the restriction on redistribution in binary form... obviously that is true, but don't intel's lawyers actually read the stuff before agreeing to these things? It really makes no sense to agree to NDA's that prevent you from ever making any kind of use of the IP.... and evidently the PVR driver blob DID pass the requirements since it HAS been released.

Oh well.
At least we've got the old psb driver working with xserver 1.8 now... that's enough to satisfy me and probably the vast majority of others. Trying to figure out what intel is thinking is a real exercise in hair loss.

[droidhacker]

Note: as sad as the state of PSB appears to be, at least its better than nvidia. We've got a big enough part of the xorg driver code to be able to adapt it to newer version of the xserver.