Free drivers for ARM graphics

Well, I don't know any actual graphics driver developer who will call what is available for r-pi kernel and userspace a "graphics driver"

> The problem is that some people refuse to accept this, and say that since someone can compile new firmware for the GPU, they won't accept 'merely' having everything that's compiled into the kernel be open source, they want the GPU firmware as well.

The only way r-pi stuff qualifies as an open/free "graphics driver" is in PR wordsmithing. Yes they have managed to game the system nicely. No it is not an open source graphics driver.

Yes, it's nice for the community, and much better than nothing. But it is off topic, wrt. my talk.

> never mind that no GPU gives you the ability to modify the firmware.

nouveau does develop it's own open src firmware.

I do hope to see more open firmware on other drives, although since on all other GPUs the firmware is considerably lower level (in most cases, basically a fancy register-writer), dealing with the firmware problem has been much lower on the priority list.

> as a side note, I'll bet that you could buy a developer kit for that chip and it would give you a (probably closed source) compiler that you could use to compile your own code for it. That is after all how they deal with anyone else who wants to use that chip in a device.

Sure. And plenty of people/companies have access to (for example) powervr or mali src code (under NDA, of course). Doesn't really help much.