[Arm-netbook] Some Pine64 Experiences (via Planet Debian)

[Wookey]

On 2016-10-11 19:11 +0200, Paul Boddie wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I saw this on Planet Debian today:
> 
> "Once more this is where, once again, the story turns bleak. We find a very 
> pretty website but no obvious link to the software (hint scroll to the bottom 
> and find the "support" wiki link) once you find the wiki you will eventually 
> discover that the provided software is either an Android 5.1.1 image (which 
> failed to start on my board) or relies on some random guy from the forums who 
> has put together his own OS images using a hacked up Allwinner Board Support 
> Package (BSP) kernel."
> 
> http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-pine-stays-green-in-winter-
> wisdom.html

Vincent Sanders (kylikki) is a fairly high-level 'some random guy'.
He's part of the 'Debian digerati' in Cambridge and a _very_ long-time arm
kernel developer, so he does at least have plenty of clue.

Doesn't mean he'll keep looking after this board with new images, of
course. Which is perhaps what you meant by 'random... OS images'. 

> I wonder what the licence compliance situation is with the vendor's own 
> software. And some of the other experiences, particularly involving 
> reliability, give a depressing sense of déjà vu to anyone with any moderate 
> amount of experience with ambitious single-board computer efforts where the 
> vendor shipped hardware without proper software support, arguably to get 
> "bottoms on seats" and to drum up business.

I don't really know about the pine people specifically, but having
recently met with a guy from Allwinner (who is paying Luke to educate
his engineers :-) Allwinner are definitely trying to improve things so
that we hackers get a proper experience (either docs or code with a
suitable licence), at least for some 'annointed-for-use-by-developers'
chips to start with (which is still missing the point rather, but them
concentrating efforts on selected products to start with probably
makes practical sense, and maybe one day it'll apply to everything, as
it should). One fight at a time...

They have noticed the persistent bad press/poor reputation and have
understood that what geeks think does actually matter in the long
term, as does upstreaming. It's a big company of course and not
everyone gets it yet, but I think we'll see progress over the next few
months, and hopefully be in a rather better place this time next year.

If we can get Allwinner to DTRT then a) it's much easier for board
manufacturers to DTRT and b) we care less because we can fix things
ourselves and mainline stuff can be used. 

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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