On Sat, 2012-12-22 at 03:00 +0800, Thomas Goirand wrote: > On 12/21/2012 09:23 PM, Mikko Rasa wrote: > > Hi Debian developers, > > > > I'm working as a consultant on a project to develop drivers for the > > PowerVR graphics processor in the Cedarview family of Intel Atom > > microprocessors in a Debian environment. The current target is > > Wheezy, and Intel wishes to get the drivers into the official > > distribution. > > > > What they've failed to take into account is that Wheezy is currently > > frozen in preparation of release, so I'm more than a bit skeptical of > > getting a new package in (I was only brought in to the project very > > recently). However, I promised to ask you about this, so here we go. > > > > It should be noted that due to licensing issues, the driver will be > > closed source. The kernel component is under the GPL, so a dkms > > package will be made. > > I'm surprised. Wasn't Intel committed to support Opensource for all if > their drivers? Are they changing their policy? If so, that's quite bad, > since both ATI and Nvidia have been annoying all the community, > insisting with non-free drivers. If we're stuck with no alternative, > with Intel also going closed source, what type of hardware can we buy > then? :( This has nothing to do with the GPUs built into Intel's Core/Xeon/Pentium processors, which continue to be supported by the i915/intel kernel/Xorg/libdrm/Mesa drivers. For Atom SoCs and chipsets, Intel has long used the PowerVR GPUs designed by Imagination, which the latter considers to be Valuable Intellectual Property. However, I think everything aside from the actual GPU is Intel-designed so we get documentation and free drivers for 'dumb framebuffer' functionality. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Make three consecutive correct guesses and you will be considered an expert.
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