HDMI Forum Closing Public Specification Access Is Hurting Open-Source GPU Drivers

[starbg]

It has always been closed. If you want to use HDMI on linux you need to run it with a binary blob (which is why we have diferent kernels, the fully FOSS ones and the standar kernel that has plenty of blobs). Displayport is a more capable conector which is fully open source. However most TV and display companies have deals with the HDMI corporation, so they use that connector, and many people get mad at DP saying it's garbage because none of their devices have it, even on this thread there are people saying HDMI is the best choice because their TVs are HDMI...

This article is about the spec documentation, the HDMI spec (not the code or the blobs, just the full long spec-sheet) was always detailed, but they took it down and you need to contact the HDMI guys with valid proper reasons and the might send it to you by mail. This means any developer trying to do anything with HDMI doesn't have proper access, while companies that pay the license get the documentation included.

I understand why devices like the raspberry pi use HDMI, so more people can adopt them, but honestly they should just go DP and have users buy an adapter cable if needed...

I hope you have not been misled by some "encyclopedias". No matter the specifications of HDMI or DisplayPort are commercial secrets, the published specifications of DisplayPort can be regarded as illegal leaks.

[starbg]

Learn your history folks. Apple doesn't pay royalties it doesn't have to. It charges royalties.
Apple doesn't/didn't support BluRayvplayback over licensing costs and restrictions.
Apple pushed for and only supports DP because they didn't want to pay HDMI royalties and restrictions. In fact in the early days DP was a straight up equivalent of HDMI. It's only recently that its come to surpass HDMI.

The prerequisite for obtaining the DisplayPort specification legally is to become a VESA member, which also requires payment

[Entzilla]

Looking at the news today pointing to this trainwreck of a decision https://www.phoronix.com/news/HDMI-2.1-OSS-Rejected :

Well this in 2024 is fuc**ing laughable still.. AMD please just drop this closed sourced weakass input std and f'in let the hdmi -"hug"-circle experience a slow and uneventfull demise

Would be fun if @rossmanngroup picked up on this

[oiaohm]

The prerequisite for obtaining the DisplayPort specification legally is to become a VESA member, which also requires payment

Fact this is not exactly the case.

https://hdmiforum.org/join-us/ First is cost HDMI forum is a flat 15000 and Vesa is 5000 for small and 10000 for large.

But not everything you need for DisplayPort is locked away.

https://vesa.org/vesa-standards/

Yes they write at the top here new DIsplayPort standards are locked away. Then the compression, Activesync.... All the bits that you need to implement in userspace/kenrel drivers vesa goes and releases without needing membership.

To make a full DIsplayport device (silicon/circuits) from scratch you need Vista membership. To have the information you need to be able to write a driver to use a Displayport hardware you don't need Vesa membership.

There is bit of a difference here. Lower cost for Vesa membership and Vesa releasing bits of specifications driver developers need. Vesa does not go and release all the bits hardware developers need.