Re: Freescale Linux BSP review

[Tom Gall <tom.gall-QSEj5FYQhm4dnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org>]

On Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 11:20 AM, Nicolas Pitre
<nicolas.pitre-QSEj5FYQhm4dnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Dec 2010, David Rusling wrote:
>
>>       Now for a bit of a rant.  Personally, I have a deep and abiding
>> respect for open source (for me, it's the key social invention of the
>> internet age), however I also recognise that it would not exist
>> without companies using open source as part of their products.  Let's
>> face it, an awful lot of open source engineers are getting their
>> mortgages paid by companies that make use of open source.
>
> I cannot be in full agreement with the above statement.  I think the
> reality is way more nuanced than that.
>
> The truth of the matter is that Open Source came into existence without
> and despite involvement from the corporate world.  And the very reason
> it started to attract interest from the corporate world is because of
> Open Source's superior quality and performance at a lower cost.  Open
> Source would have existed even without companies using it as you would
> still have those Open Source activists using it themselves in your
> product, even without the help of the corporate money. The company
> involvement in Open Source did indeed accelerate its development by
> paying many people to work on it full time.  But Open Source would still
> be there and still be in good shape even if corporate involvement didn't
> happen, just like it was before.

Right but it didn't happen over night. Getting to this state took time
and wasn't
an immediate quality. Back in them thar early days it took a lot of
figuring out,
in some case with and some cases without the cooperation of the hardware
types. How many years did I pine for token ring drivers.... sigh.

The very important part of this whole discussion is getting arm Linux and it's
3d driver situation so it TOO is the best.

Right now it's not and pointing to other elements of the system and saying
"it's great" is besides the point.

This discussion is good, but for it to have a positive outcome, we need to
turn the direction back to how we get to the end goal
for arm 3D graphics. It's not probably going to happen at once with one
patch that does what everyone wants. I think it's going to take graduated steps
and some compromises.

Regards,
Tom
"We want great men who, when fortune frowns will not be discouraged."
- Colonel Henry Knox
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