01-05-2016, 08:53 PM
(01-05-2016, 07:58 PM)o9guy Wrote: It is are correct in that there are two main points, but I don't think people understand how intertwined those two points are. In my view, it's the community that makes a product truly great. Communities grow out of many things including documentation, software, peer support, etc. I could be wrong but some of the best and most widely adopted products came from ecosystems with a greater degree of manufacturer support to open source, even if binary blobs were involved.
--- snip ---
I wasn't involved in those particular communities, so I can't comment with the benefit of experience. I will, however, say that I suspect the vitality of the community supporting a particular board is directly proportional to the popularity of said board. Simply put, RasPi is still king and unless you care about price or have a niche requirement, it's what you go for by default. It's simply first mover advantage at play. Given that, it's hardly surprising that no other community has developed to the same size. I fully agree that any board that aspires to give RasPi a run for its money needs to be more open, not less.
I'll bow to your experience with the quality (or lack thereof) of Allwinner blobs in the past. I would argue, from a technical point of view, that if it works well in android it can be made to work well in linux given the same kernel + libc. Android is simply a funky linux rootfs with a disgusting java vm environment. In fact, I'd be willing to have a small blind wager on the libc being a factor in stability - I wouldn't expect glibc and bionic libc to be bug-compatible.
I never said pressuring Allwinner is whining. I've said both publicly and privately that Pine64 need to do that. TL Lim has been doing that and stated that he will continue to do it. However, at this point, we don't know what we need from Allwinner exactly aside from things they can't possibly provide (IP licensed from ARM). We don't even have the dev boards yet, although they're on their way. Once we are clear on what needs to be done and which of those things are blocked on Allwinner providing something they haven't made available, we can start pushing. All of that is right and proper and needs to be done.
Spreading FUD a la "this board won't be usable with linux", arguments that it's a worse security risk than an anarchist who likes the weather better in Moscow than in Hawaii working at the NSA because of the 3.0.x kernel etc *is* whining. It's not accurate, it's not helpful and it doesn't contribute to moving forward. I hope this clarifies that the condemnation of whining was not aimed at you.
As far as community and enthusiasm, to be perfectly frank, the initial chunk of work needs competent developers. The enthusiasm or lack thereof from people who need a set of instructions to turn this into a nice HTPC won't move the needle on getting linux support done. This isn't meant to downplay their importance - their orders are what enabled the volume of production to get the price down and potentially enough attention from Allwinner to get them to do some of what we want them to, but I personally would hack on this board regardless of whether there were 1 or 10k of them waiting for linux support. Since we seem to have at least a few capable of doing the work required waiting for dev boards which are being shipped as we speak, the chances are good that at least one will have the time to graft something workable together sooner rather than later. Then it's a matter of building on that, part of which is seeing how workable the Allwinner blobs are. It's like Schroedinger's cat - we won't know whether the blobs work well or not until we open the box. As they are currently, like the cat, both dead and alive at the same time, there's no use in being alarmist imo.
-p