Distributions quote of the week [LWN.net]

Upstreaming patches require 3 elements:

the interest to push patches there
the skills to understand the patch(es) one is upstreaming, so they can address the comments and requests for improvements they receive after posting the patches
the time to rebase the patches on top of the latest upstream commit, prepare the submission and engage in constructive discussions with the reviewers

When it comes to the original PinePhone, the upstreaming effort has pretty much completely stalled by now, as it seems no one in our community possesses all of those elements. [...]
We are therefore considering dropping support for both the original PinePhone and PineTab once the current kernel branch reaches end-of-life, ultimately turning those devices into high-tech paperweights.

— The Mobian blog (thanks to Paul Wise)

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Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 12, 2023 8:12 UTC (Thu) by 5fdb1f (guest, #156654) [Link] (6 responses)

Shouldn't this be the responsibility of Pine64? The PinePhone is still being sold on their store and they don't provide software support for it?

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 12, 2023 10:22 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

This is currently perfectly acceptable around the world, legally speaking; one of the reasons some entities are railing against the EU's proposed Cyber Resilience Act is that it would make places that sell a product with both hardware and software components responsible for the software components they sell, and the only way for Pine64 to escape responsibility in law would be to sell the device with no software.

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 17, 2023 3:26 UTC (Tue) by Fishwaldo (subscriber, #47595) [Link] (1 responses)

It’s will be an interesting position that pine64 will find them in if that ever happens. The companies goal is to get cheap hardware into the hands of developers and let the “community” maintain the software for it. By not maintaining software stacks, they are able to keep costs low. Whatever software they do ship with devices is either a BSP package from the upstream hardware vendor (Eg, Rockchip) or software developed by the community (eg, some devs may get pre-production units for testing etc). Pine64 (the company) don’t employ any software devs at all, and currently call out software support issues as a community support only. (https://pine64.com/support/). Given their target market is more developers than end users, they could find themselves in a rough spot if that act ever goes into law. (Disclaimer: I received free hardware from pine64 to help bootstrap their PineTabV product. In that particular case, it shipped with a “factory test” image to validate the hardware worked but wasn’t intended to be used as an end user image)

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 17, 2023 9:41 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The easy position for the company to take is to sell hardware without any software, and then it's not liable for the software, because it doesn't ship any software, nor does it point you to binaries it recommends. With the current way the CRA is drafted, if it points you to projects where it's upstreamed its hardware support (where it doesn't have control - e.g. Linux kernel), then they're completely safe; the hardware they sell is developer kits, non-functional as a phone, and to make it functional, you have to buy the devkit, and find suitable software separately.

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 12, 2023 15:48 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link] (1 responses)

From my reading of the blog they're talking about their original PinePhone, not the more recent models. It also seems they learned from their mistake and the more recent models don't have this single point of failure. I guess the original models will just no longer receive updates? I don't see why they should spontaneously stop working.

But this does seem to indicate that shipping a device running Linux which requires non-mainline patches is a risky proposition if you don't have the resources to maintain the changes. TANSTAAFL

Incidentally, I see the device warranty is only 30 days. Is that even legal? I guess that's why it says BETA in big letters everywhere.

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 17, 2023 3:30 UTC (Tue) by Fishwaldo (subscriber, #47595) [Link]

On the warranty side, if you buy from Pine64 directly, then it’s only 30 days. If you buy from some of their affiliates, (eg, pine64eu) then you get 2 years warranty - the cost is also more from the EU side, but pine64eu already includes VAT/Customs etc where as pine64 then buyer has to pay their own customs/VAT etc. (Pine64 itself is based in Hong Kong IIRC)

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 16, 2023 16:07 UTC (Mon) by Fishwaldo (subscriber, #47595) [Link]

Pine64 (the company) don’t do software. (Any software that ships with a device is either some BSP reference OS, or contributed by community members that might have had access to pre-production units) Their goal is to get hardware into developers hands. They leave the software to the community. Pros and Cons to it. They keep costs low so they can sell affordable devices, but then the community has to pick up the slack.

Distributions quote of the week

Posted Oct 16, 2023 18:02 UTC (Mon) by error27 (guest, #8346) [Link]

There is upstreaming and uprevving. Uprevving is where you take your patches and rebase them on top of the latest kernel.

They're basically saying that after three years it's too overwhelming to uprev it. It would have been better to uprev it after every -rc1 release. Maybe they didn't have the man power to do that, but it's the easier way. If you wait for three years between uprevs it's always going to be seriously painful.

The Raspberry PI devs really do a good job about uprevving. There are probably other people you could work with who might be able to help. Where it's like after ever -rc release they're uprevving their stuff so you probably all have the same questions.