[Arm-netbook] Side-Topic: Liberating PocketCHIP

[mike.valk at gmail.com]

2017-08-08 16:28 GMT+02:00 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>:
> On Tue, Aug 8, 2017 at 2:57 PM, mike.valk at gmail.com <mike.valk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Cedar VPU requires a closed source driver dependent
>
>  you mean a criminally-infringing library which has at the very least
> stolen copyright code from ffmpeg confirmed (not a "closed source"
> driver).

:-) yep that one! And the driver source, while constructed out of gpl
software, was never released. And thus still closed software. Illegal,
gpl violating, but closed. Their attempt to rectify was to create a
open source stub driver and a closed source userspace part, consisting
of obfuscated FFMPEG code. [1]


Luc Verhagen, et al. explained and barked loudly at Allwinner on what
they had to do to rectify. But I guess the IP owner of cedarx is not
AllWinner. And their vendor, the IP owner, the original infringer, did
not give them permission to rectify properly. Or something else. [1]

>
>> on the OS
>> stack. Thus locking you in place. That situation, again no thanks to
>> NTC, is improving, albeit slowly.
>
>   libcedrus has been around and working for a long, long time on the
> A13 / R8 / GR8 (all the same SoC).  it also works on the A20 and i had
> full 1080p video playback fully operational back in august 2016.  so i
> know it's a fully libre video stack.

sunxi-vdpau is open source but it is a hack. An unsafe one! [3]
sunxi-cedrus is not ready for primetime last time I checked. V4L is
slow to accept the needed changes.[2]

[1] http://linux-sunxi.org/CedarX
[2] http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus
[3] http://linux-sunxi.org/Cedrus/libvdpau-sunxi