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

[Pablo]

On Wed, May 24, 2017 at 03:07:45PM -0400, ronwirring at Safe-mail.net wrote:
> If you reinterpret what I write then tell on what grounds. I think lkcl's reasons for not reverse engineering a mali are right. 
It is difficult to follow your argumentation. You write that you agree
and disagree in the next sentence. 
>Weighing them up against the importance of getting a libre software gpu, I reach the conclusion that the reverse engineering should be done.
Before you plan a difficult crowd funding campaign and involve the FSF, please tell us your
counter arguments to Lukes reasoning on a technical and ethical level.
For example to the following points I am quoting from Lukes email reply to you in
the thread about "firefly 3399 all source software disclosed?":
- "take one of the "open gpus" or parts of them and use that."
- "the sad fact of reverse-engineering: all that effort, with
*no guarantee of success*.... just to get something that's years
out-of-date."
- "well, with the same money it would be possible to make our
own libre processor, with enough extensions to be able to do 3D
graphics *without* paying anyone a cent." 

> There have been some remarks about the probability of a successful crowd funding. I mentioned the numbers 50000 people, each paying 5euro. Notice on this email list, people want to pay 5eu, if they get the software in question. 
>It is safe to say more than 10 million people have gnulinux on their computer? A major part of them know about the importance of libre software and a part of them would want to act on it.
I don't know if your numbers are correct but it seems important to me to
point out that only a fraction of all GNU/Linux Users own a device with
a mali GPU. Only a part of that group would in principle support such a
campaign. Only some of the willing will actually fund the campaign...

Pablo