Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Device Passthrough Considered Harmful?

Ricardo Ribalda Delgado
2024-07-25T13:02:32Z

On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 2:23 PM Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 11:26:38AM +0200, Ricardo Ribalda Delgado wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 24, 2024 at 10:02 PM Laurent Pinchart
> > <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com> wrote:
>
> <...>
>
> >
> > It would be great to define what are the free software communities
> > here. Distros and final users are also "free software communities" and
> > they do not care about niche use cases covered by proprietary
> > software.
>
> Are you certain about that?

As a user, and as an open source Distro developer I have a small hint.
But you could also ask users what they think about not being able to
use their notebook's cameras. The last time that I could not use some
basic hardware from a notebook with Linux was 20 years ago.

>
> > They only care (and should care) about normal workflows.
>
> What is a normal workflow?
> Does it mean that if user bought something very expensive he
> should not be able to use it with free software, because his
> usage is different from yours?
>
> Thanks

It means that we should not block the standard usage for 99% of the
population just because 1% of the users cannot do something fancy with
their device.

Let me give you an example. When I buy a camera I want to be able to
do Video Conferencing and take some static photos of documents. I do
not care about: automatic makeup, AI generated background, unicorn
filters, eyes recentering... But we need to give a way to vendors to
implement those things closely, without the marketing differentiators,
vendors have zero incentive to invest in Linux, and that affects all
the population.

This challenge seems to be solved for GPUs. I am using my AMD GPU
freely and my nephew can install the amdgpu-pro proprietary user space
driver to play duke nukem (or whatever kids play now) at 2000 fps.

There are other other subsystems that allow vendor passthrough and
their ecosystem has not collapsed.

Can we have some general guidance of what is acceptable? Can we define
together the "normal workflow" and focus on a *full* open source
implementation of that?

--
Ricardo Ribalda