It Could Be A While Before Seeing The Tamil GPU Driver Code

While the Tamil driver is moving along for open-source ARM Mali T-Series graphics support, it could be a while before seeing the actual source code.

Luc Verhaegen presented at FOSDEM a few weeks back about his work on Tamil, the Lima driver project's work on supporting the newer ARM Mali T-Series GPUs found on various SoCs. While Luc showed off some demos and is working towards a Tamil Mesa driver, the code hasn't yet been opened up.

A Phoronix reader emailed in to recommend we checkout the #dri-devel IRC logs this week from Wednesday where Luc (libv) was debating merits with other open-source driver developers. There Luc said that "I have been in situations where releasing code was completely counterindicated...same for getting/forcing documentation out."

He went on to explain, "one part is that it takes work to get some stuff finished and cleaned up, and everything around me tells me that it i would just be burning my time...another part of it is that things i do and produce have a tendency to boomerang back on me."

As with almost all open-source projects, there's always stupid users, "these days i just see people whine and complain, without them having much basis to do so. and none of it makes me more willing to put more work into things."

You can scan the IRC logs if interested in the whole conversation, but the point of the story is that if you're looking for the new open-source driver code, the reason you can't find it is that it hasn't been released yet.