Over 30 years ago, I was doing some OS9 (Microware, not Apple) development on a 68k embedded target. I needed a PIO driver that could do bi-directional I/O. The OS came with a PIO driver, but it wouldn't let you switch directions. I approached the vendor with several options:
1) I will pay you to write another driver with this functionality.
2) License the driver source code to me and I will do it.
For reasons I do not remember, they would not do either.
I ended up reversing their PIO driver and implementing a version with the functionality I needed. I was uneasy about doing this, but we never sold or distributed the work so it was probably legal. (The development was for an in-house application with just one target.)
kind of weird to me that we still have so few phones that have started running mainline. there's a lot of postmarketOS phones, but my understanding is they Helium/libhybris which mixes in a ton of the Android support infrastructure/drivers to do the job. i could be overly concerned, but there being so few distributions & such specific distributions targeting phones is exactly the good this work OUGHT to be unlocking, & it just seems like progress in making that happen is disorganized / not really happening, alas alas alas.
getting a toe-hold in, where we start to see self-determinism on what our devices run, would be such a compelling & powerful vision. i really hope we can start to see that!
ubuntu touch targets the Pixel3. i'd be curious to know what they did. PinePhone & Purism really took it from the top, have their own hardware that starts in a more easy-to-work with set up. but I don't see why that would be required to get a decent regular linux distro (arch, debian) running on a phone, with a gui (sans many device drivers!).
because when someone goes out of the way to give us a phone with mainline and a qwerty physical keyboard like we have been asking for ages, nobody buys and they go bankrupt?
Last time I looked, few pmos devices used libhybris. They're mostly downstream kernels with no GPU acceleration, though they're getting progressively mainlined.
Mainlined phones generally try to leverage OSS drivers where possible.
How would a Linux phone be wrt security? I just had my iphone stolen, don't have to worry too much about data loss because it's unlikely somebody will crack into it.
I don't think that's true for Android, but I'm not sure about Linux phones.
I haven't worked with their GPUs but I do work with their camera ISPs. I suspect that their reason might be that that seeing how to write software against the chip sort of gives away the secret sauce for how the chip works. I don't know if I would agree with that, but you can kind of intuit the design of chip based on its interface. How much values that provides is unclear though :/.
Also, they do charge customers for that code and it costs money to support/customize it work customer use cases. I suspect that's another part of the equation.
Transparency and openness are things that in-house lawyers probably attack by default. They point all imagined risks re patents and bugs, liability, reputation, and security, and they specialize in CYA arguments.
[+] [-] anonymousiam|4 years ago|reply
1) I will pay you to write another driver with this functionality.
2) License the driver source code to me and I will do it.
For reasons I do not remember, they would not do either.
I ended up reversing their PIO driver and implementing a version with the functionality I needed. I was uneasy about doing this, but we never sold or distributed the work so it was probably legal. (The development was for an in-house application with just one target.)
[+] [-] rektide|4 years ago|reply
kind of weird to me that we still have so few phones that have started running mainline. there's a lot of postmarketOS phones, but my understanding is they Helium/libhybris which mixes in a ton of the Android support infrastructure/drivers to do the job. i could be overly concerned, but there being so few distributions & such specific distributions targeting phones is exactly the good this work OUGHT to be unlocking, & it just seems like progress in making that happen is disorganized / not really happening, alas alas alas.
getting a toe-hold in, where we start to see self-determinism on what our devices run, would be such a compelling & powerful vision. i really hope we can start to see that!
ubuntu touch targets the Pixel3. i'd be curious to know what they did. PinePhone & Purism really took it from the top, have their own hardware that starts in a more easy-to-work with set up. but I don't see why that would be required to get a decent regular linux distro (arch, debian) running on a phone, with a gui (sans many device drivers!).
[+] [-] ajklsdhfniuwehf|4 years ago|reply
https://www.gsmarena.com/blackberry_key2-9187.php
:)
[+] [-] MayeulC|4 years ago|reply
Mainlined phones generally try to leverage OSS drivers where possible.
[+] [-] opan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ant6n|4 years ago|reply
I don't think that's true for Android, but I'm not sure about Linux phones.
[+] [-] nicoburns|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsder|4 years ago|reply
If you don't officially release the documentation, opposing companies find it much harder to sue you for patent infringement.
[+] [-] ironman1478|4 years ago|reply
Also, they do charge customers for that code and it costs money to support/customize it work customer use cases. I suspect that's another part of the equation.
[+] [-] fulafel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brandmeyer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fulafel|4 years ago|reply
> On Android, we must cross-compile from a desktop with the Android Native Development Kit, ironically software that doesn’t run on Arm processors.
[+] [-] defer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pabs3|4 years ago|reply
https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid
[+] [-] the-dude|4 years ago|reply
I am pretty sure Collabora know what they are doing.