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From: Will Dyson on 10 Dec 2009 15:40 On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Pekka Paalanen <pq(a)iki.fi> wrote: > The big question is what we call ctxprogs: binary blobs that are > clearly executable, running somewhere in the GPU. No-one seems > to know, if those are copyrightable, or if they can be redistributed. > In their current form, they have been recorded from the nvidia > proprietary driver using mmiotrace, and copied verbatim for each > card type. > > Would you be willing to pull that kind of stuff into Linux? > > I would not even dare sending them to the Linux firmware > repository, since they have some license requirements, too. This seems similar to the unfortunate situation with the b43 wireless card firmware. Broadcom refuses to provide the firmware under a redistributable license (or even as files separate from their proprietary drivers). This did not stop b43 from being included in Linux. Distributions have dealt with it by providing a script that downloads the proprietary driver and extracts the firmware from it to files in /lib/firmware. Do you think that a similar solution for nouveau would be legally problematic? Or is the issue technical, since you mention that the ctxprogs were obtained by mmiotrace, instead of a more straightforward extraction from the binary driver blobs? -- Will Dyson -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Pekka Paalanen on 10 Dec 2009 16:20 On Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:35:08 -0500 Will Dyson <will.dyson(a)gmail.com> wrote: > This seems similar to the unfortunate situation with the b43 > wireless card firmware. Broadcom refuses to provide the firmware > under a redistributable license (or even as files separate from > their proprietary drivers). This did not stop b43 from being > included in Linux. Distributions have dealt with it by providing > a script that downloads the proprietary driver and extracts the > firmware from it to files in /lib/firmware. > > Do you think that a similar solution for nouveau would be legally > problematic? Or is the issue technical, since you mention that the > ctxprogs were obtained by mmiotrace, instead of a more > straightforward extraction from the binary driver blobs? It is definitely a lot harder than a script that just downloads something. It would have to: - download the proprietary driver - install it and load it into the kernel - activate mmiotrace (if it even is compiled in) - reconfigure and start X and quit - analyse the mmiotrace log to extract the ctxprog and ctxvals - undo all the proprietary setup I cannot comment on the legal side, but the practise sounds too cumbersome. Thanks. -- Pekka Paalanen http://www.iki.fi/pq/ -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Ingo Molnar on 10 Dec 2009 17:00 * Alan Cox <alan(a)lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote: > > Last time they were asked that, they wanted to be free of changing their > > kernel/userspace interface before upstreaming. > > So put it in staging with a note to that effect. That'll also get it > more exposure and review. Well, arguably that particular idea should have come from the people maintaining that area of code. There's this one missing driver which covers (more or less) like 40%-50% of the PC market, that's a glaringly significant issue, isnt it? It doesnt get any more significant, does it? Ingo -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Linus Torvalds on 10 Dec 2009 18:40 On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, Stephane Marchesin wrote: > > I'm not sure why people are arguing so much over this, given that no > nouveau devs were at the kernel summit, and we only heard rumours > afterwards that there were complaints about us not being ready for > merging. The thing is, my complaint is not about whatever external driver project. We have those all the time. I'm not complaining about Nouveau people. I'm pissed off at distribution people. For years now, distributions have talked about "upstream first", because of the disaster and fragmentation that was Linux-2.4. And most of them do it, and have been fairly good about it. But not only is Fedora not following the rules, I know that Fedora people are actively making excuses about not following the rules. I know Red Hat actually employs (full-time or part-time I have no idea) some Nouveau dveloper, and by that point Red Hat should also man up and admit that they need to make "merge upstream" be a priority for them. See? I'm not complaining about _you_. I'm complaining about Fedora and Red Hat. > If you have issues to raise about nouveau, please raise them on the > nouveau, mesa or dri lists, at least some time before starting to > complain. I must say I didn't think such a big issue was going on > here, that's the problem with rumours. See above. It's not you. It's Fedora. If Fedora hadn't merged Nouveau and shipped it, I wouldn't care. Or rather, I probably still -would- care, but I would care because nVidia hardware is common, and I like open source drivers. But I wouldn't be disappointed and pissed off. And this has been going on for a _loong_ time now. Fedora has been shipping Nouveau for about a year now, I think. Linus -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
From: Dave Airlie on 10 Dec 2009 19:00
On Fri, Dec 11, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Linus Torvalds <torvalds(a)linux-foundation.org> wrote: > > > On Thu, 10 Dec 2009, Stephane Marchesin wrote: >> >> I'm not sure why people are arguing so much over this, given that no >> nouveau devs were at the kernel summit, and we only heard rumours >> afterwards that there were complaints about us not being ready for >> merging. > > The thing is, my complaint is not about whatever external driver project. > > We have those all the time. I'm not complaining about Nouveau people. > > I'm pissed off at distribution people. For years now, distributions have > talked about "upstream first", because of the disaster and fragmentation > that was Linux-2.4. And most of them do it, and have been fairly good > about it. > > But not only is Fedora not following the rules, I know that Fedora people > are actively making excuses about not following the rules. I know Red Hat > actually employs (full-time or part-time I have no idea) some Nouveau > dveloper, and by that point Red Hat should also man up and admit that they > need to make "merge upstream" be a priority for them. > > See? I'm not complaining about _you_. I'm complaining about Fedora and Red > Hat. > >> If you have issues to raise about nouveau, please raise them on the >> nouveau, mesa or dri lists, at least some time before starting to >> complain. I must say I didn't think such a big issue was going on >> here, that's the problem with rumours. > > See above. It's not you. It's Fedora. If Fedora hadn't merged Nouveau and > shipped it, I wouldn't care. > > Or rather, I probably still -would- care, but I would care because nVidia > hardware is common, and I like open source drivers. But I wouldn't be > disappointed and pissed off. > > And this has been going on for a _loong_ time now. Fedora has been > shipping Nouveau for about a year now, I think. Its been shipping it for 2-3 years now, nouveau was a userspace X.org driver with a normal drm, we never wanted to upstream that but we need to get some exposure on it before the KMS effort took place. In my opinion barring the legal issue, nouveau has only been in an upstreamable state for about 2-3 months now, since it relied on a lot of core infrastructure we upstreamed with radeon KMS. So the delay isn't as major as you seem to think. The core TTM infrastructure we based radeon and nouveau on in F10, and F11 wasn't in any state suitable for upstream, however we felt it would help to expose the modesetting pieces to users before then to get them tested independent of the core DRM status. So Red Hat have been putting a lot of time and effort into upstreaming this driver, however until the ctxprog issues is resolved to our satisfaction, no Red Hat employee can add a Signed-off-by to this code. Why this doesn't affect Fedora so far is because its an open question with our lawyers, if they decide that we need to pull this from Fedora we will, until they do we are living with the status quo. Dave. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo(a)vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ |