On Friday 10. March 2017 17.08.47 Julie Marchant wrote:
Trisquel forum thread here:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/amd-apparently-taking-requests-feedback-comm unity
And this is the Reddit thread where it happened:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_ radeon_and_other/def5h1b/
It would be a good idea to encourage AMD to do this. Who knows? It could lead us to an x86 EOMA computer card of some sort in the future. ;) Not to mention, it would just be better for us overall to have AMD on our side.
Interesting comment:
"Unfortunately AMD is licensing Trustonic's PSP firmware. They do not have the option to open source it."
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5x4hxu/we_are_amd_creators_of_athlon_r...
Of course, this is just one aspect of AMD's technologies, but similar obstacles probably appear along each of the paths towards freedom for all the different things their products provide. Even with all their GPU expertise, they are unlikely to make the technologies transparent because every patent troll and potential competitor might try and sue them over some detail or other. That, unfortunately, is the pact of silence all the GPU vendors adhere to, whether or not the explanation really has much merit.
It's interesting that this happens now. I was vaguely aware that AMD had just launched their Ryzen line of products, and was also vaguely aware that they'd been trying to get their Zen microarchitecture out. However, AMD have a history of underwhelming the market in many ways, so it makes one wonder what an appeal to the "community" is all about. One can be cynical and say that companies only appeal to anyone if the market is too tough, and once they're doing fine again, they forget about all their friends in the "community".
Still, their stock price has gone up sixfold over the last few months, so maybe I'm not the one to second-guess them.
Paul