ARM summit at Plumbers 2011

Hi folks,

Following on from the founding of the cross-distro ARM mailing list, I'd like to propose an ARM summit at this year's Linux Plumbers conference [1]. I'm hoping for a slot on Thursday evening, but this remains to be confirmed at this point.

We had some lively discussion about the state of ARM Linux distros at the Linaro Connect [2] event in Cambridge last week. It rapidly became clear that some of the topics we discussed deserve a wider audience, so we're suggesting a meetup at Plumbers for that bigger discussion. The initial proposed agenda is:

* ARM hard-float
+ What is it and why does it matter?
+ How can distributions keep compatible (i.e. gcc triplet to describe the port)?

* Adding support for ARM as an architecture to the Linux Standard Base (LSB)
+ Does it matter?
+ What's needed?

* FHS - multi-arch coming soon, how do we proceed?

* 3D support on ARM platforms
+ Open GL vs. GLES - which is appropriate?

but I'm sure that other people will think of more issues they'd like to discuss. :-)

If you wish to attend, please reply to the cross-distro list and let us know to expect you. Make sure you're registered to attend Plumbers Conf, and get your travel and accommodation organised ASAP.

[1] http://www.linuxplumbersconf.org/2011/
[2] http://connect.linaro.org/

Cheers,
--
Steve McIntyre [email protected]
<http://www.linaro.org/> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs

from the point of LSB and FHS (as I'm part of both of those workgroups), I don't know if there will be anyone there representing those groups, but if that would be valuable it might be possible to prod LF into sending Jeff Licquia - just ask early enough! Otherwise... Steve, you know where to poke at us. My email address might hint that I might not have any time to work on it, but I'll always answer questions :)

UPDATE: we've not had many people confirm interest in this event yet, which is a shame. If you would like to join us for this session, please reply and let me know. If we don't get enough interest by the end of Sunday (28th August), then we'll have to cancel the meeting.

Cheers,

Steve McIntyre                                [email protected]
<http://www.linaro.org/> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs

Unfortunately there is no way I could make it, but on the subject of 3D support on ARM, Luke recently mentioned something that initially seemed outlandish but upon closer examination doesn't seem like a bad idea. As we all know, the state of openness of specifications of commonly used ARM 3D GPUs is at best dire. What has been proposed is a bit radical, but it doesn't actually seem that implausible. Specifically, combining Open Graphics Project (http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php) and the xilinx zynq-7000 or similar (dual core Cortex A9 + FPGA). The idea is to have an OGP GPU in firmware in FPGA. In terms of the power budget, it seems to work relatively sanely considering what it is, and it is as ideal as it gets as far as openness and flexibility goes.

I just thought it's worthy of a mention.

Gordan

Quoting Gordan Bobic <[email protected]>:

It does seem outlandish, but it is kind of cool. Is it going to give enough 3d speed? The next gen tegra is supposed to have a 24 core GPU.

It is probably more sane then my idea of just having a test suite from digital video out -> digital video receiver/capture card to get known test results. Then you could set up a hinted genetic algorithm based on a comparison. It would only work with digital video signals though.

If you can quantify what "enough 3D speed" means, then perhaps that can be assessed. There really aren't many applications around at the moment to make this an issue. I'd be more interested in it's ability to decode 1080p.

Then again - it's FPGA! You can load a different "firmware" depending on whether you need 1080p decoding or 3D rendering, or some other kind of specialized DSP offload with only bare minimal VGA. :)

Personally, I think OGP would be worth it even if just for the fact that we would no longer have to beg (in vain) the vendors for decent drivers or published specs. The added flexibility on top is just a "free extra". :)

Gordan

[ok i'm going to do another cross-post in a bit which will give some background and also perhaps some other topics for discussion, but i wanted to cover this first. apologies for people for whom this is just noise]

if nvidia have a published announcement of their plans to release a
fully free-software-compliant 3D driver to match the proprietary hardware, then that would be brilliant news [about their next gen GPU].

about the zynq idea: it actually doesn't matter if it's "enough".
the very fact that free software developers - and people who want to be free software developers - around the world could even _remotely_ consider buying one of these for an affordable price instead of $750 for the present OGP card means that more people can at least begin to try to address the unbelievably wide and very discouraging gap between us and proprietary 3D hardware.

the NREs on producing a set of masks are _only_ $250,000 if you are a
taiwanese company asking TSMC, but for everyone else they're at least $2 million. the development costs if you use off-the-shelf tools before you even _get_ to the point where you can ask a fab to produce those masks spiral out of control (Mentor Graphics charges something like $250,000 per month or maybe per week per user; NREs for peripheral hard macros can be $50k to $100k each etc. etc.), taking the total development costs in many cases to well above $USD 30 million.

and that's excluding all that "proprietary software" which of course
is utterly useless without the corresponding hardware but, because of USA Accountancy Rules, where "IP" can be added to the books to increase the value of a company, there's a strong financial disincentive to consider just "givvin it aww away 4 fwee".

and here we are with a CPU which could well be around the $25 - $30
mark in large enough volumes, presented with the possibility to say "**** u all, you proprietary GPU companies and your greed, fear, patent warfare and lack of willingness to collaborate and cooperate".

ok maybe not those exact words but you know what i mean :)

l.

I quite like the wording, actually. :)

Gordan

ok. allow me to give some perspective and background as to why i believe that a bigger discussion is important, and to whom that discussion is important.

a few years ago i read what seems like a silly book, called "The Strategy-Focussed Organisation". sounds trite, but i was advised to read it when i proposed some ideas and was confronted with the very valid question "why should i [a lowly "developer"] _care_ about this 'strategy' that you are proposing?" (fortunately the person who asked the question was the same one who advised me to read this "silly" book).

it's a tough one, isn't it? why should any of us - as free software
developers - _care_ about the state of ARM Linux? you're getting on with the truly crucial task of managing the distro that you're committed to. it's a focussed job: it's a vital role, and you should not let anyone tell you otherwise.

yet... and this is the bit that this silly book explained: it's just as important to know where *your* role "fits in" with what else is going on. linaro, for example, as you no doubt well know, is tasked (by its subscribers who pay $1m / year) with sorting out vital underlying infrastructure that ties what *you* are doing in with the subscriber's ARM CPUs. you're doing the user-facing stuff; they're doing the CPU-facing stuff. that's *their* strategic role: in concrete terms it means sorting out gcc with ARM optimisations, and it means seeking out and/or increasing the number of areas of shared and refactored code across as many places as possible, in order to reduce the software development effort required of their subscribers. linux kernel. device tree. LSB. (and, it has to be said, _if_ the stupid, stupid 3D GPU companies got with the picture, linaro could well take gallium3d for example under its wing, too).

so the key question is: if linaro is "taking care of" this aspect, because that's linaro's role, then why _should_ any distro maintainer care? yes they should be aware of what's happening, but there's no real incentive to get pro-actively involved, is there? all that's required is passive acceptance of the work filtering down from linaro...

and this perhaps explains the lack of response to the proposed meetup, steve.

[the other reason is that yes, although _discussion_ can take place about 3D GPUs, we as free software developers feel "powerless to act" in the face of so much money. despite the fact (which personally makes me extremely angry) that without our overall contribution these companies simply would not have a gnu/linux distro or a linux kernel on which to make that money].

so, the important question to ask, then, is what *is* good motivation to take action? if, indeed, any action need be taken at all, which is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to reach. not that i personally agree with that, but i can live with it :)

and, to answer that question, i feel it's important to take into account some context and background. many of these things you will already be aware of, but let me put them all together, here.

take a deep breath...

* with the rise of android, Matt Codon shows us an empirical glimpse into the blatant state of GPL violations by OEMs taking place on the Linux Kernel and more: http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/

* many android vendors have lost the right to use linux kernel source code. this article is the most insightful and non-aggrandising i've yet found into the GPL violations situation and its consequences:
http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2011/08/most-android-vendors-lost-their-linux.html

* Our Linus declared in april that he was getting fed up with the state of the ARM Linux Kernel. my take on this is that there is an overwhelming amount of "selfishness" creeping into the Linux Kernel development. Our Linus has also recently stated that his passion is actually low-level device driver development.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1114495/focus=112007

* Russell King, the ARM maintainer, has completely lost all motivation to work on the task of merging ARM Linux patches. with the amount of selfishness that has been going on for so many years, i am surprised he's tolerated it this long.
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1121096

* I've seen proposed solutions and many many descriptions of the problems caused by the rise of ARM Linux, but none of them look at this from an "overview" perspective, which is that the core of the problem is lack of cooperation and collaboration - precisely counter to the whole purpose of Free Software. here, i hope and believe, is a small insight into that, along with some references and links:
http://lkcl.net/linux/linux-selfish.vs.cooperation.html

* an attempt last year to motivate people to get together to buy an early ARM Laptop (the CT-PC89E) which would have been available at the time in mass-volume for $102, the design of which turned out to be sponsored by China Telecom, found more than just GPL violations on the Linux Kernel and u-boot source code. from this chinese factory (who were purely hardware assemblers and middle-men. girls actually) one of the ICs responsible for keyboard and mouse was "black" - no markings; the gnu/linux distribution "mid-linux.com" was *also* a GPL-violating distro which may have links to China's Great Firewalled "Red Flag" Linux; the ODM (who licensed the design from China Telecom) was instructed to offer us nothing more than China Telecom 3G CDMA modems (useless for Europe which needs UMTS); successful reverse-engineering of a linux kernel onto the device encountered evidence of "security" attempts to lock the GPL-violating kernel to the device (which we easily replaced); when my associate presented Debian GNU/Linux running on the device at a meeting with the ODM and told them it had an entirely GPL-compliant and entirely Free GNU/Linux Distro on it, which we wanted to sell across the world, they went very very quiet. lastly, Frans, who created the Debian Installer Port for the 20 people who bought the CT-PC89E samples, is dead. by suicide. i leave these as facts - stated facts - and allow YOU to sift through them and choose which ones to put together, to make your own conclusion(s). they may OR MAY NOT be related.

* the FreedomBox Foundation has a clearly-stated goal, to create the software around small boxes that provide "transition" technology off of non-free and privacy-invasive servers that are all too tempting for corporations and governments to interfere with or peek at... yet there is a clear disconnect and a very wide gap between stating the goal and actually taking any action to go about creating the software, which has clearly not been addressed. The Elephant is in the room, here...

* the UK government was praised by China for looking into possible censorship of the Internet:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/08/16/0019248/China-Praises-UK-Internet-Censorship-Plan
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/08/22/217206/Twitter-To-Meet-With-UK-Government-About-Riots

* amongst many other things, the USA continues to take illegal control of DNS zones, destroying the trust and sovereignty of the very fabric of the Internet.

* nokia (who received a $EUR 0.5 billion loan from the European Investment Bank just a few years ago) - our darlings who were using debian as the basis for their smartphone strategy - bought the proprietary and non-community-driven late-GPL-releasing Trolltech, and then recently pulled out of meego _and_ the open-sourcing of Series 60 and out of free software entirely with the famous "burning platform" quote from their CEO.

* HP has very wisely just fire-sold their entire tablet stock in a way that will completely recoup their capital outlay (if it has a resistive touchscreen then the BOM is an estimated $80 and the tablets have sold out in a few days at $98: $18 is just enough wiggle-room for shipping as well as possibly even a modest profit, particularly on the 32gb version @ retail $150. if it's capacitive, the BOM will have an extra appx $30 on top, meaning they'll get all the working capital back... just).

* lastly and perhaps most crucially, it has to be said that this "Peak Oil" thing, along with the "Global Warming" thing, is undeniably taking a grip on the world, which leaves people with a choice to *readily* face it (i.e. be prepared and better yet as well get _other people_ prepared, as a secondary priority), or to face the upcoming situation in a "Crisis" mode, which, if faced *as* a "Crisis" is quite likely to result in your death. people such as joey hess clearly get
it: joey now lives entirely off-grid, and yet still has an internet connection. in a forest. i live in a remote area of scotland, now, in a place which has its own well, and we're growing our own food. it's still a work-in-progress.

i could continue with this, and expand it with more examples, but let me make some summary points:

* we're intelligent people, who have achieved a great deal
* we're responsible for creating the software that underpins today's computer technology
* governments are waltzing in and doing whatever they feel like.
* corporations are creating hardware WITHOUT taking us into account, and are grabbing with both hands and returning nothing.

in short: we - intelligent Free Software Developers - are having the
piss taken out of us, to put it mildly.

so - i tell you what: i'm going to stop there, for now. i'm going to leave it at that, for people to think, digest the above, and perhaps come up with some answers [i have some ideas, but i want to know most crucially if people are willing to hear them!]. and, to give you an opportunity to think: is this my problem, at all? do i actually care?
what _is_ my role? and, if i _do_ care, what could i do if i combine
with a number of other people who also care?

i trust that you can see that the scope of the background goes wayyy beyond that which linaro is tasked with, so i hope - i really do - that you feel that this really is something which you care about and can actually feel motivated to consider that _some_ sort of action needs to be taken, beyond the very valuable tasks and roles which you are presently carrying out.

if, on an individual basis, you feel that the answer is "no", it's not my problem, then i can only apologise for having taken up your time, and wish you good luck with the future.

l.

Luke:

Step back from the keyboard just a bit. :)

It's true that the glass isn't completely full--- but it's pretty darned full! And we wouldn't be discussing the various GPL and other violations that you cite were it not for the overwhelming successes of Free Software, ARM, Linux, and Android.

We are well past debating the merits of Free Software et. al, which itself is a huge milestone that we need to recognize. Now it's time to let the lawyers do their jobs. And they will, because there are tremendous sums of money at play. Money that wouldn't be there if it weren't for us developers. But we need to stay out of their way, while at the same time taking care to continue producing tangible things that are worth fighting over.

As developers, we've won. Deal with it. Revel in it. And then get over it.

I have observed all the hand-wringing regarding the state of ARM Linux, and it's obvious to everyone that there is still work to be done. ARM isn't like PCs, and that's obviously inconvenient for Linus but it's an essential part of ARM's success. Russell King has been overworked for a decade or more, attempting through sheer force of human/developer will to keep ARM Linux from running off the rails.

As far as ARM Linux is concerned, I think we're dangerously close to
being smothered by our own success. We have to learn to work
smarter, because we can't work any harder. And I applaud Linaro and the countless others for recognizing this problem and looking for ways to resolve it.

I for one would love to participate in the ARM Summit, but I'm a sole proprietor without an expense account to charge the travel costs to and they are too large for me to carry personally. I suspect I'm not the only one in that situation.

The fact that there has been little response to the ARM Summit doesn't mean that nobody cares or that the problems seem to large to solve. It just means that we're going to have to find a different way to get this work done.

b.g.

Bill Gatliff
[email protected]

I think that the thing being disputed isn't that ARM is different from PCs, but rather the issue that different ARM SOs do the same thing in different ways.

in the early days of the PC we had the same issues (those who were around to remember the 'almost' PC compatible machines (from some of the biggest names in the business). they all thought that they had good reasons to do things differently, but over time they all changed to hide the differences from the system.

ARM is currently in worse shape than the PC market ever was in this aspect, but in this case it's less a matter of getting the hardware guys to change what they do than it is to get better documentation of what the hardware is really doing and not duplicating drivers for cases where the right answer is just replacing a constant with a variable (just as an example of the very common case where the same component is wired to a different address)

David Lang

David:

I agree.

Maybe Linaro or an equivalent organization could provide a "ARM kernel janitor" service to the community, where they refactor existing ARM platform/driver code to make it more common. This is something that's difficult for a single person with experience in only one or two SoCs to do, but it would be pretty straightforward work for a team of three or four people with broad coverage of the SoC devices the kernel supports now.

As such refactoring consolidated larger and larger chunks of kernel code, new designs would gravitate towards those consolidated implementations because they would be the dominant references.

b.g.

Bill Gatliff
[email protected]

Don't bet on it. That's not how it works (unfortunately.)

Just look at the many serial port inventions dreamt up by SoC designers - everyone is different from each other. Now consider: why didn't they use a well established standard 16550A or later design?

Also consider why ARM Ltd designed the PL010 and PL011 primecells which are different from the 16550A.

This "need to be different" is so heavily embedded in the mindset of the hardware people that I doubt "providing consolidated implementations" will make the blind bit of difference. I doubt that hardware people coming up with these abominations even care one bit about what's in the kernel.

Russell:

I wasn't being clear.

The Linux community isn't large enough to dictate to ARM SoC designers how their hardware should work--- mostly because the "Linux community" doesn't buy chips, corporations do. And it has been my experience that the parts of corporations that negotiate deals for the hardware aren't populated with the developers of the drivers for said hardware.

What I meant was that as new hardware becomes available, if we have strong driver models then driver authors will adopt those APIs rather than inventing their own.

I'm thinking about GPIO before gpiolib, for example. Or the current state of PWM.

I don't routinely see a "need to be different" as existing strictly for its' own sake, even with the hardware guys. Rather, I see a lot of developers (hardware and software) that are so consumed with their own requirements and deadlines that they don't get the chance to step back and see the bigger picture. The resulting fragmentation is a symptom, not the disease itself.

And honestly, some of the fragmentation is a really good thing. I love how Atmel does their GPIO controllers on the SAM-series parts, for example. The SODR and CODR registers are a godsend for concurrent code. We wouldn't have such treats if everybody did things the same way.

So I'm generally ambivalent to the hardware situation. But that doesn't mean that the software has to be equally fragmented. In fact, I think the hardware situation necessitates that we pay particular attention to NOT fragmenting the drivers for said hardware. Gpiolib proves that is possible, something I didn't think I would find myself saying when David Brownell started his effort. I'm glad he proved me wrong.

b.g.

Bill Gatliff
[email protected]

russell, good to hear from you.

can i recommend, that although this is a really wide set of cross-posting on a discussion that underpins pretty much everything (except gnu/hurd and minix) because it's linux kernel, that, just as steve kindly advised, we keep this to e.g. [email protected]? i'll be doing that from now on [after this] perhaps including arm-netbooks as well, but will be taking off all the distros.

so - folks, let's be clear: please move this discussion to [email protected], and, if it's worthwhile discussing in person, please do contact steve, so he can keep the slot open at the Plumbers 2011 summit.

*sigh* because they wanted to save power. or pins. or... just be
bloody-minded.

i think... russell... after they are told, repeatedly, "no, you can't
have that pile of junk in the mainline linux kernel, Get With The Programme", you'd think that, cumulatively if they end up having to maintain a 6mb patch full of such shit, they _might_ get with the programme?

and if they don't, well.... who honestly cares? if they don't, it's
not *your* problem, is it? _they_ pay their employees to continue to main a pile of junk, instead of spongeing off of _your_ time (and linus's, and everyone else's in the Free Software Community).

then don't f******g make it _your_ problem, or anyone else's, upstream!! :)

this is the core of the proposal that i have been advocating: if it's
"selfish", i.e. as bill and many many others clearly agree with "if the bang-per-buck ratio is on the low side" then keep it *out* the mainline linux kernel...

... and that really is the end of the matter.

the sensible people that i've been talking to about this are truly puzzled as to why the principles of "cooperation and collaboration" behind free software are just being... completely ignored, in something as vital as The Linux Kernel, and they feel that it's really blindingly obvious that the "bang-per-buck" ratio of patches to mainline linux kernel need to go up.

so the core of the proposal that is the proposed
"selfish-vs-cooperation patch policy" is quite simple: if the patch has _some_ evidence of collaboration, cooperation, refactoring, sharing - *anything* that increases the bang-per-buck ratio with respect to the core fundamental principles of Free Software - it goes to the next phase [which is technical evaluation etc. etc.]. otherwise, it's absolutely out, regardless of its technical correctness, and that's the end of it.

the linux kernel mainline source tree should *not* be a
dumping-ground for a bunch of selfish self-centred pathological profit-mongering corporations whose employees end up apologising in sheer embarrassment as they submit time-pressured absolutely shit non-cooperative and impossible-to-maintain code.

you're not the only one, russell, who is pissed off at having to tidy
up SoC vendors' patches. there's another ARM-Linux guy, forget his name, specialises in samsung: two years ago he said that he was getting fed up with receiving yet another pile of rushed junk... and that's *just* him, specialising in samsung ARM SoCs!

we're just stunned that you, the recipient of _multiple_ SoC vendors piles of shite, have tolerated this for so long!

anyway - i've endeavoured to put together some examples, in case that's not clear: i admit it's quite hard to create clear examples, and would greatly appreciate help doing so. i've had some very much appreciated help from one of the openwrt developers (thanks!) clarifying by creating another example that's similar to one which wasn't clear.

http://lkcl.net/linux/linux-selfish.vs.cooperation.html

this should be _fun_, guys. it shouldn't be a chore. if you're not enjoying it, and not being paid, tell the people who are clearly taking the piss to f*** off!

but - i also would like to underscore this with another idea: "lead
by example" (which is why i've kept the large cross-distro list) we - the free software community - are seeing tons of nice lovely android tablets, tons of nice lovely expensive bits of big iron and/or x86 laptops, and only in very small areas (OpenRD Ultimate, GuruPlug, Pandaboard, IMX53QSB, Origen) are our needs for actual hardware which _we_ want (and i'm *not* being presumptious here - i'm inviting people to *say* what they want) just aren't being met.

who wants a bloody 800x600 VIA VunnnderMedia ARM9 350mhz tablet, to
do linux kernel and gnu/linux distribution development on, _anyway_???
and who the hell wants only 512mb of RAM (iMX51). and who in their
right fucking mind dreamed up that 1024x600 LCD panel size?

so here's what i propose:

we, The Free Software Community, want Our Figureheads (linus, bruce,
alan, russell) to call us to arms (so to speak), to band together a la KickStarter http://kickstarter.org (or other), so that we can create the hardware platform(s) that *we* want, and, in the process, can take the opportunity to sort out the Linux Kernel mainline tree in the process (learning by doing, doing by leading, leading by example etc. etc.)

apart from anything - and this goes to you, linus and russell - i
think that you would be much happier taking a break from doing git patch conflict management, _actually_ getting down and dirty with some real device driver writing, and i think you'd be much happier doing that knowing that the device you were writing those kernel drivers for was something that actual real free software developers really really wanted.

now, as i said above: i don't _dare_ to presume that i know what
actual real free software developers want, in terms of hardware, but there's a small sampling on the debian-arm mailing list... let me drop you roughly in the middle of it, here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2011/08/msg00045.html mostly that was focussed around those little engineering boards (panda, IMX53QSB, origen etc.) but my aim here is to get people to think:

what hardware, which is fully free-software-compliant, that you would
buy and recommend to others, that could also be attractive in mass-volume, do _you_ want to see, that would be useful to _you_?

i'm getting fed up of seeing stuff come out of factories that's
completely useless. or gpl-violating. and/or requires reverse-engineering.
http://lkcl.net/linux/ideal-vs-reality.of.product.development.html for some background.

as a free software developer, what hardware do YOU want?

answers on this one to [email protected] (subscription
required, please remember)

and, lastly - linus, russell, alan, bruce: there are people out there
who would really appreciate if you could take up this call. not just me. we'd like to see you using your skills, and actually be happy and enjoy doing nitty-gritty linux kernel development, to the benefit of the free software community, instead of turning into patch junkies^H^H^H^H^H^Hmonkeys^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmanagers.

l.

I would relly like the dscussion to go on widely as it is now. Otherwise I would probably not follow this interesting discussion.

best regards
keld

keld, the encouragement is appreciated, and i do follow the reasoning
(which is that, given that gnu/linux distros are at such an interesting threshold point, there's simply been no need for such a large cross-posting before).

but, i have to keep my word, and i said i wouldn't interrupt people
on such a large scale, preferring instead that those people who are *actively* interested participate. if, however, *you* - or anybody else feels that this topic still needs to reach a wider audience, in order to help things reach critical mass, please do actively bring it to their attention.

i have another write-up, done today, which brings together both the
software and this time hardware strategic design concepts that i believe will help put control firmly back into the hands of Free Software Developers:

http://lkcl.net/linux/modular.computing.architecture.html

linus: if you're happiest doing device driver development, then for
goodness sake stop complaining about how bad ARM development is going, and get involved in a real-world ARM embedded project. not just _any_ old ARM embedded project, but a "Meta-"Project that would help future Linux Kernel Development through large-scale code re-use. and, through that, you'd actually really _really_ begin to appreciate why Russell's getting so pissed off.

russell: i realise that this is going to sound strange, but if you're
actually _happy_ continuing to get pissed off and disillusioned with being nothing more than a Git Patch Conflict Manager, please feel free to completely ignore the entirety of this message _and_ the link above. you _can_ tell people to piss off: you're perfectly within your rights as a Free Software Developer to do so. take a busman's
holiday: lead by example and help spearhead this project.

everyone else: if you feel that you want to see happen a project to put the kind of hardware that is desirable *to you* into *your* hands (because it was, like the OpenPandora, developed with open involvement from its community, rather than developed in secret and presented as a fait-accomplit), then make yourself known - especially to those people whom *you* believe should spearhead the project.

also it has to be said that if you believe that there is someone else whom you feel would be more suitable to spearhead the project, please do say so - and help campaign to bring them in.

OpenPandora was - is - a *success*, despite vast sums of money - 4,000 preorderers *up-front* money held in escrow - being spent on casework and on making mistakes such as paying an ex-TI employee $50k to fail to get the 1251 WIFI module PCB area right.

learning from these mistakes, it *is* possible to drastically cut the cost of hardware development, by leveraging existing designs and adapting them.

now, it has to be said that if, after hitting such a large audience i _still_ don't get any traction on this project, then that's it, i'm "dun spammin". as an experienced Free Software Developer with ARM-embedded HTC Reverse-Engineering experience, i _will_ continue as best i can to play "guess what kind of hardware that Free Software Developers would want", and i _will_ continue to fit this into ongoing negotiations with PCB Factories in China, with whom i have been working hard to get them to respect and understand the importance of GPL Compliance *up-front*.

a translation of that paragraph is: you, The Free Software Community, are being presented with an OpenPandora-like opportunity, to leverage negotiations for the production of mass-volume products, to actually really REALLY get that decent ARM Laptop with a pre-loaded GNU/Linux Distro of YOUR choice (*), or that decent Desktop PC with a pre-loaded GNU/Linux Distro of your choice - whatever it is, you need to speak up NOW.

and the reason you need to speak up right now is because then i can justify going to the factory to say "yes, there are NN people who want this", and it goes from there.

but, of course, it goes without saying, that if you would prefer that there be other figureheads leading this project, for them to choose appropriate factories and to negotiate them into GPL compliance, please feel free to do so, and take this opportunity to speak up and to campaign for such figureheads to back this project.

i don't mind that happening: all i want is my damn 1280x800 12in (and importantly $160) ARM-based laptop, damnit :)

l.

(*) instead of a laptop with only 512mb of RAM. or a 1024x600 LCD (Toshiba AC100, Genesi Efika, AlwaysInnovating, etc.). or being vapourware (too numerous and pointless to enumerate). or being an R&D model which was so expensive to develop that no retailer could touch it (e.g. the Pegatron Netbook). or being effectively closed-source (almost every Android product in existence). or GPL-violating (almost every Android Tablet in existence). or requiring reverse-engineering (the Toshiba AC100).

ok, so: follow-up:

is anyone interested to know what the costs would be, of an
engineering board conforming to the above strategy, using a low-end Cortex A9 CPU such as the AML-8726-M? (for reference, the 8726 is known to be between $13 to $15 depending on volume)

does anyone have any questions, comments or suggestions regarding the
strategy to place cooperation and collaboration back at the heart of linux kernel development?

any ideas on how to improve the software development tools (such as
git) to help make that strategy easy to be part of the day-to-day development process?

perhaps most importantly, does anyone have any _better_ ideas than
what's being proposed?

or, is everyone happy with the way that things are, and thinks that
they should continue as-is (perhaps until russell quits completely, or linus bans ARM patches entirely from the mainline linux kernel)

what is it going to take for people to engage on these issues?

does anyone want to take responsibility for making sure that there is
some progress?

l.

I'm obviously confirming, but I'll repeat that for the record. My interests here include helping to lead up Fedora's ARMv7 efforts, but also wider ARM platform standardization (boot, device enumeration, multi-arch, ABI, kernel consolidation, and many other things).

If there's at least representation from a few of the distros (as it seems is the case at this point) then I think it's worthwhile having the formal slots. Nothing is lost in so doing. In any case, many discussions will take place if we have the opportunity to do so.

Jon.

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I've certain got an interest in hashing out ARM relative issues from a tools standpoint. So count me in.

jeff

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[ Last big cross-post; I'll just post to the cross-distro list in
future! ]

And that seemed to provoke enought interest from people all over, which is good. This event is definitely going on. Let's look forwards to some good discussion. :-)

Cheers,

Steve McIntyre                                [email protected]
<http://www.linaro.org/> Linaro.org | Open source software for ARM SoCs