[Arm-netbook] Allwinner git / GPL stalemate situation

[Gordan Bobic]

On 06/01/2012 12:03 PM, Tsvetan Usunov, OLIMEX LTD wrote:
> Olimex will be granted to access to Allwinner development git repositories
> if we sign NDA which do not allow us to share the sources with 3rd parties.
>
> Now we are in stalemate situation if we want to develop the Linux support
> for A10-A13-OLinuXino we have to use the information on these repositories
> as the other documentation is incomplete, we spoted lot of errors on it (but
> we have been warned that there are errors anyway) and only these sources
> guarantee that we will not lose time while development, in other hand
> signing this NDA will make us GPL violator as we will not be able to release
> the BSP sources.
 >
> Any ideas? We are so smallish customer that we can't influence
> Allwinner/Wits on GPL at all. If we do not sign, they just do not allow us
> access and we are free to go somewhere else :-)

Sounds like a good case for going with someone like Marvell. Most of 
their SoCs (Kirkwood and Armada A510 at least) are in mainline (and have 
been in mainline for ages). They may be more expensive and power hungry, 
but you just cannot put a price on having pre-existing support in the 
mainline kernel.

Gordan