[Arm-netbook] mali gpu reverse engineering lkcl may ignore

[David Niklas]

On Sun Jun 18 07:09:40 BST 2017,
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl at lkcl.net wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 7:53 PM, zap <calmstorm at posteo.de> wrote:
> 
> > IF you can figure out how to reverse engineer the 3d engine, ikcl
> > would be very happy I am sure.
> 
>  that used to be the case but is no longer true.  please read section
> 2.5 of the bill of ethics before proceeding further with this thread:
> https://www.titanians.org/the-bill-of-ethics/
> 
>  ARM's illegal and unethical activity which destroyed luc verhaegen's
> career and reputation - including several counts of slander as well as
> blackmail of the company funding his reverse-engineering efforts - was
> the last straw.

Well I am kinda stuck with two Mali-GPUs, both I bought under the
impression that the code is open-source if in FLOSS and I would imagine
that there are others in this situation.

>  if we proceed to reverse-engineer MALI, logically it results in
> people buying more ARM products.

Actually, I read on wikipedia what Linux's support for Mali is and what
the firefly and CHIP webpages described their product as (e.g.
proprietary vs. opensource), and thus I seem to have been fooled, twice.
Surly others will come to the same conclusions unless they dig into this
ML, or the Linux kernel archives, or stumble on Luc's page?

>  if people buy more ARM products, logically it results in more money
> (resources) going to support ARM's illegal and unethical actions.

Which will happen anyways due to ignorance. I try to stay up on what
companies are nice and which are not plus the general goings on in the
opensource community (I know about Nvidia and AMD/Radeon), and this entire
problem with Mali blindsided me.
This is not a problem that is as well publicized as say, Linux giving
Nvidia the F word.

>  any action which is taken that results in support or endorsement of
> unethical actions is, logically, itself, unethical
>
>  therefore, logically and plainly put: unless ARM's attitude changes
> the reverse-engineering of MALI is itself an unethical act.
> 
>  so it's a simple chain of logical reasoning based on ethical
> principles.
> 
> l.

Unless you're trying to be merciful to those who are less fortunate.
Look at those who buy prisoners from ISIS or any other violent group.
Or, how about ransomware?
Do we just tell people "Next time don't use windowz"?
It's a tough choice, I agree Luke, but if I succeed you can be certain
that I, like Luc, will pay dearly for my good intentions. Then at least
Luc will gain a friend as I dwell in a state of solidarity with him, and
his actions will not go to waste.

The reason I would really be interested in the Mali GPU driver is not
because of the need for a basic driver, nor for the sake of games
(though they do have an appeal), but because of the Opencl support which
I'd really like to play with (My desktop card is an AMD and their Opencl
support is non-functional at this time in my system for whatever reason
in spite of my using the latest kernel and Mesa library).

Now can we get back to how to do the reverse engineering itself?

Sincerely,
David