Re: [Ghm-discuss] [gnu-prog-discuss] Planning the next GNU Hackers Meeting

[Dodji Seketeli]

Werner Koch <address@hidden> a écrit:

> On Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:46, address@hidden said:
>
>> * The new hardware is a lot more secret than PC hardware.
>
> Even more of a problem is that the product cycles are short.  One year
> is already a long lifetime for most mobile hardware.  With our limited
> resources it is very hard to "compete" in this business.

It's true that it is hard to compete on the "bling" front, or said
otherwise, on the convenience-only front.  But I don't think we are even
at the point were we want to compete.  Rather, it seems to me that we
are merely at the point where we'd like to exist, on these devices.

For instance, the most widely used GPU on these devices (powervr)
doesn't have a Free Software driver yet.  And it's unlikely to have one
unless it is reverse engineered.  This is a huge and painful task ahead.
Similar things could be said for some vital radio-frequency handling
parts of the device as well.

And a system like Android/Linux doesn't help a Iota with this matter as
all those interesting low level bits are non-free there.

-- 
                Dodji