Re: [Ghm-discuss] [gnu-prog-discuss] Planning the next GNU Hackers Meeting

[lkcl luke]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 12:57 PM, John Darrington
<address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 08:41:25AM +0100, Dodji Seketeli wrote:
>
>     For instance, the most widely used GPU on these devices (powervr)
>     doesn't have a Free Software driver yet.  And it's unlikely to have one
>     unless it is reverse engineered.  This is a huge and painful task ahead.
>
> GNU has overcome huge and painful tasks before.  How can we start doing
> something about that?  What needs to be done to reverse engineer the beast?

 http://elinux.org/Create_Open_Source_PowerVR_GPU_driver

 however, ironically, despite it being very common, it's been
recognised in the industry that powervr is a complete dog.  so despite
it still being used in x86 embedded CPUs (menlow etc.) it's slowly
dropping from favour, and is being superceded by MALI.

 which is yet _another_ proprietary GPU engine.

 btw yes these engines qualify as "System Libraries" under GNU GPL
Exemption clauses, so it's 6 of one and half a dozen of the other.

 l.