Collaboration from Allwinner

[tllim]

Dear Folks,

I have already managed to get Allwinner president to assign an resource to deal with open source community. His name is Mr. Xiong and software director level. I will start engage with him tonight and explore how to work together. However lets set 3 simple ground rules first:

1. There is no conspiracy theory between Pine 64 and Allwinner. Daniel Kottke, Steve Jobs good pal, passed me an Allwinner A64 web posting (http://www.allwinnertech.com/plus/view.php?aid=527) and ask me to check on this $5 quad core 64-bit ARM SoC, this is how the Pine64 journey begins. During this journey, I discovered the open source community concern towards Allwinner and I ask my China friend (ChipHD GM, Mr. Liu) to introdcue Allwinner President Mr. Teng. We meet, have lunch together on December 2015 at Allwinner HQ. I ask his support on open source community and he agreed. This is the story.

2. We try to collaborate together. This is not a court case, no "witness", no "defender', and nobody should plays 'judge" role.

3. From my selfish role, I will start with A64 SoC support first. Once and if this collaboration goes smoothly, the other board using Allwiner SoC in market will enjoy the benefit.

BTW, I am a system guy. Hopefully somebody from Sunxi can help me up.

Regards,
TL Lim

[KryPtAlIvIaN]

Great to hear TL! Keep us posted :-)

[Ketsa]

Excellent news.

Happy to back the project.

[taros]

These guys at http://free-electrons.com/blog/seminar-p...linux-arm/ do seminars on porting Linux to ARM SoCs.
You can float the idea to Allwinner to bring them to China for a seminar.

[tllim]

These guys at http://free-electrons.com/blog/seminar-p...linux-arm/ do seminars on porting Linux to ARM SoCs.
You can float the idea to Allwinner to bring them to China for a seminar.

Interesting idea, lets me check. His presentation material is good. Do you have Alexandre Belloni contact info?

[taros]

You can find the contact information from a recent commit to the Linux kernel.
For example, https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel...bf045c896b

[tllim]

You can find the contact information from a recent commit to the Linux kernel.
For example, https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel...bf045c896b

Thanks. ... TL

[patrickhwood]

If you do have contacts at Allwinner, perhaps you can ask them to release the sources for the binary blob at lichee/brandy/u-boot-2014.07/arch/arm/cpu/armv7/sun50iw1p1/dram/libdram from the lichee_linux_310.tar.gz distribution under the GPL. They've already done this for most of their SoCs here: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootload...sic_loader.

[tllim]

If you do have contacts at Allwinner, perhaps you can ask them to release the sources for the binary blob at lichee/brandy/u-boot-2014.07/arch/arm/cpu/armv7/sun50iw1p1/dram/libdram from the lichee_linux_310.tar.gz distribution under the GPL.  They've already done this for most of their SoCs here: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/bootload...sic_loader.

I have discussed about the libdram with them on two occasions and no positive result yet. I will meet up with allwinner folks in China on February 21 week and this request will surface again. However, we need to get into vert specific on this request, due to they have some concern on certain info may related to DRM and security from their other business partner such as Google Whitevine DRM.

[drag00n]

Any updates about releasing code/collaboration from Allwinner's side?
You told us that an engineer from AW was assigned to the pine development...
Please tllim, pine crew cant just let all the weight of the linux development to rely on a handful of bright people *not affiliated to your company*... (and no, i am not one of them [FACE WITH STUCK-OUT TONGUE AND WINKING EYE])
I agree that a strong and smart community is good and helps, but the main dev must be done by pine crew...
As usual, im sorry if i sound hard, but language restrict my explaining abilities...

Please keep us updated, dont let this project die before its birth!