Someone Wants To Step Up To Take Over The VIA OpenChrome Driver

Written by Michael Larabel in Hardware on 2 February 2016 at 03:09 PM EST. 1 Comment
HARDWARE
The OpenChrome driver for open-source VIA graphics on Linux isn't quite dead yet... There's a new developer wanting to step up and take over maintainership of the X.Org driver.

Sadly there hasn't been much to report on with the OpenChrome project in a while. James Simmons had been the independent contributor making great advances on the OpenChrome DRM/KMS driver that there was talk for a while of having mainline ambitions. However, he doesn't seem to be active now in quite a long time now on this driver. In December there was a new developer wanting to revive the code and see it mainlined.

Sadly, since that initial communication in December, there hasn't been anything further for signifying any long-term interest or commitment. Meanwhile, Xavier Bachelot who had basically been serving as maintainer of the OpenChrome DDX driver also hasn't been active in a long time.

Last week though was a new OpenChrome mailing list message: How do I become the OpenChrome project maintainer? Someone else now is looking to take over maintaining and developing the OpenChrome driver. This new developer looking to step up to the plate, Kevin Brace, has previously sent to the mailing list patches for the driver, but hasn't got anything merged due to lacking commit access and no one else being around to merge his work.

Kevin says that he has around 20 patches he's looking to initially merge. The sole response so far to this mailing list thread about Kevin being interested in taking over is from FreeDesktop.org/X developer Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia saying he should first apply for a FreeDesktop.org developer account.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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