Silicon Motion Extends Linux Graphics Driver

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Silicon Motion Extends Linux Graphics Driver

This week Silicon Motion fired off an email to the X.Org developers with a patch that introduces 38,463 lines of new code for their open-source Linux graphics driver...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTEzNzc

[uid313]

Wow that hardware looks really crappy.

The drivers are under a open source license this time?

Last time they tried contribute code to kernel and the license for it said NOT TO BE REDISTRIBUTED lol.
They ever worked that out?

[ChrisXY]

The drivers are under a open source license this time?

Last time they tried contribute code to kernel and the license for it said NOT TO BE REDISTRIBUTED lol.
They ever worked that out?

Why don't you look yourself? They at least added that header several times:

+Copyright (C) 1994-1999 The XFree86 Project, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
+Copyright (C) 2000 Silicon Motion, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
+Copyright (C) 2008 Mandriva Linux.  All Rights Reserved.
+Copyright (C) 2008 Francisco Jerez.  All Rights Reserved.
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of
+this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in
+the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
+use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies
+of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do
+so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
+copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
+IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FIT-
+NESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
+XFREE86 PROJECT BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
+AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
+WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
+
+Except as contained in this notice, the names of The XFree86 Project and
+Silicon Motion shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the
+sale, use or other dealings in this Software without prior written
+authorization from The XFree86 Project or Silicon Motion.

[AJenbo]

That is a big code dump to go threw, any idea if they are planning to maintain it them self?

[Tobu]

The hardware may be unimpressive, but it's nice that they are coming to the LKML to share, which is a simple and normal thing to do.
Much better than those graphic vendors that think the rules don't apply to them.

[Kivada]

It's gear like this that begs the question, why? Unless this thing is barely larger then a miniPCIe card for the 1x slot and costs less then $5 I don't see where this could possibly be useful.

Wouldn't any shop that needed to put a head on their server already have a bottom end half height "off the shelf" GPU that already had working OSS drivers? You know, the kind you can find for like $25~35 at any office supply or electronics store within a 10 min drive?

[uid313]

Why would anyone want this shitty graphics card with 16 mb RAM and low resolution?

I had better graphics card 14 years ago.

[curaga]

^^ and ^

Price, power use, and physical chip size may play a part.