[Arm-netbook] Flashing the NAND

[Siarhei Siamashka]

On Wed, 11 Dec 2013 14:37:37 +0100
"Aaron J. Seigo" <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday, December 11, 2013 00:07:19 Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
> > Do you realize that our little dispute with Aaron Seigo has nothing to
> > do with you, Joem and/or EOMA-68 community?
> 
> FWIW, I have never perceived this as a dispute. I didn’t even realize there 
> was anything to even dispute until Siarhei and libv got rather upset on irc 
> (while I wasn’t even there, btw). Having slowly come to an understanding of 
> what their issues were, I have tried to clear them up.

I just felt that your statement:

> * there are numerous gotchas (like that opengl demo program that you
>  have to run first to get opengles started on the A20.. wtf?) that are
>  quietly hidden away. they are on no roadmap, have no prioritization
>  and nobody seems to work on them. (those three things are
>  interrelated.)

was borderline rude (let's call it this way). Because the opengl issue,
provided as an example, had absolutely nothing to do with being "hidden"
or "nobody working on it". This all was happening at the very same time,
when we were trying to identify the root cause of it together with
Marco Martin, who reported the issue only about a day before.

Now it's understandable that the real work is being done by Marco
Martin and you are just acting as a middleman. This clearly hinders
communication and increases the chances of misunderstanding.

About my (over)reaction. The arm-netbook mailing list is not even the
right place to report the issues like this (they are outside of the
scope of EOMA-68). That felt like I was bad mouthed behind my back.
Then instead of silently holding a grudge against you, I decided that
it would be much better to request for explanations and clear all
misunderstandings.

Another somewhat unexpected thing is how little people from around here
know about linux-sunxi. I can't find any posts from you, joem or
freebirds in the linux-sunxi mailing list. Yet linux-sunxi is providing
*software* support for Allwinner SoCs (unless you are using the Android
SDK from Allwinner). The *hardware* projects and the companies working
on them, such as RhombusTech, OLIMEX, CubieTech and the others all
depend on linux-sunxi. Ignoring the linux-sunxi existence is just
asking for communication troubles. Where do you get your kernel sources
for Allwinner hardware? Are the EOMA-68 people assuming that all this
work is somehow being magically done by elves while nobody is looking?

Now it became clear that the people around here are likely under the
influence of Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton, who boycotts linux-sunxi
mostly because of the use of google groups and github services. This
issue has been identified and, I believe, already addressed (see the
replies from "mnemoc" to "lkcl"):
    http://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2013-12-09
In particular this reply: "<mnemoc> there are real technical reasons
against google groups, as there are technical reasons to want mirrors
of our repos outside github.com".

So is everyone going to be happy now? This would be great.

> Sadly, There has been no response to my emails from a couple days ago on this 
> list, although Siarhei apparently had time to respond to Freebird’s email. 
> That is disappointing, as I’d really rather resolve the issues than have 
> people choose sides.
> 
> Siarhei: can you please acknowledge what I wrote on Monday? Thanks in advance.

In fact I don't have that much free time to waste on this mostly
pointless discussion anymore :(

Sadly your mails are long and verbose. And I feel like replying to all
of them would do nothing good other than backing you into a corner
(because you still don't seem to have a coherent story due to missing
or misinterpreting bits of information here and there).

To sum it up: it is very likely that you had good intentions, yet you
made me unhappy. However that's not a big deal and I can live with that.

I'll only reply to this part, because I think it is relevant:

> That said, the “WTF” is due to the binary blob that is the mali driver we have 
> to work with today. You have very little to do with that, last time I
> checked. Why are you taking this so personally?

We can't blame the binary blob for all the problems. My take on this is
that xf86-video-fbturbo has to work at least as good as xf86-video-mali.
If *anything* happens to work worse, that's *my* problem without doubt.
And I want bugs to be reported to me, just to see whether anything can
be done.

-- 
Best regards,
Siarhei Siamashka