ARM Mali 400/500 DRM Driver Volleyed Out Again, Trying To Get Into The Mainline Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ARM Mali 400/500 DRM Driver Volleyed Out Again, Trying To Get Into The Mainline Kernel

The open-source ARM Mali space certainly seems to be heating up this year... The Panfrost Gallium3D driver was just merged to mainline Mesa days ago as developers work on bringing up an open-source 3D stack for the Mali Midgard and Bifrost graphics processors. For those with older Mali 400/500 series hardware, the separate Lima-revived effort has sent out their latest patch series for trying to get their DRM driver into the kernel...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Lima-DRM-Driver-Mainline-V2

[Adarion]

Good to see since Mali 400 should be fairly widespread. Still it is nasty that all sorts of people from somewhere else have to write drivers, and not the very hardware manufacturer. Someone who designed or implemented the HW also should provide a reasonable driver.
(No, half-assed blob drivers that only work on ancient kernels aren't reasonable.)

By the way: Why did libv stop with the development? Wasn't there a team of 3 or 4 people around it?

[starshipeleven]

By the way: Why did libv stop with the development? Wasn't there a team of 3 or 4 people around it?

afaik he was not really that welcoming due to his constant teenage anger towards the world or something, he eventually burned himself out and said "fuck it, the world does not deserve me" or similar.

[anarsoul]

It's Mali400/450, not 500.

[Terrablit]

By the way: Why did libv stop with the development? Wasn't there a team of 3 or 4 people around it?

God, please don't bring that particular FOSS flamewar up again. That story's a bit of a dead horse that enjoys being beaten for the past several years.

He's put his side of things on livejournal. It's all unsubstantiated, though. He feels like he was blocked and blacklisted in the industry by AMD and ARM. He blames particular people (including a prominent AMD developer and a prominent mesa/DRM developer) for being obstacles, even though it's not at all in line with their current community involvement. He got upset at the level of support/opposition he felt he was getting and took a sabbatical for emotional health. Which is his right. He also didn't want to share any of his recent changes. Which is also his right, though really frustrating. I think some of that code was used in a FOSDEM presentation. All of this may or may not be varying degrees of true, but it's extremely hard for anyone who wasn't present in every single meeting at two different companies and lurking on multiple IRC channels for several years to say how much of a conspiracy there was.

It's also possible that he wasn't officially blacklisted, but that he was instead avoided for causing so much drama for so long. Because no one wants to get involved in some weird online blood feud. The drama around it also caused people to avoid contributing to lima for a long time. As did the idea that he had already completed a lot of code that he just didn't want to release. Because no one wants to duplicate work.

He also seems to want to drag others into it and make definitive statements about the intent of others, which isn't his right. He frequently popped into threads telling them to not work on the project because he thought they'd have similarly bad experiences, which burned out all the goodwill I had for him. Being burned out is one thing, but burning out others before they start is another. There's some hard feelings, and it's better that we don't drag them up. Everyone else involved is content to just leave it alone, but he's not really there yet.

[LoveRPi]

Just in time since most vendor's Utgard licenses expire.

[tuxd3v]

afaik he was not really that welcoming due to his constant teenage anger towards the world or something, he eventually burned himself out and said "fuck it, the world does not deserve me" or similar.

I think that what you said is not what is behind what make him leave..
For what I understood,
ARM doesn't wanted a guy starting a open-source driver, he had lots of problems and maybe too much pressure because of that.
Also another employers around, saw him like a threat, instead of a solution, his name was marked..

And even looking to his Journal about things, and even though some seems paranoid, the truth is that if it were with me, I would act like that..
So the Paranoid term here, being used as a consequence of some nasty events that are not related with him, but caused by external factors..

He tried something that the industry doesn't wanted, but was a lot appreciated for all people( including me ), and for the courage and work that he have done, he will always deserve my respect!

He have done a lot of his capabilities, effort, and life, and nobody at some Companies, recognized the work..

If you go back in time, we can speak about Mr. Stallman, that was considered by the CIA a threat to Nacional Security, only because he wanted openSource, he was followed, pressured, and so on, at the point that he doesn't use a car( because it has GPS ), he doesn't use a credit card, because its tracked, he doesn't have a id card to open doors because its tracked, he doesn't own cellphone, and so on...

Can we imagine the damage inflicted to a brilliant person, with psychological warfare?
Does any one remember what hapenned to KDE Aaron Seigo too?

[LoveRPi]

libv's crime was being born too early before the companies really had an open source strategy. Now a days, you can't even pay people to use your platform let alone build FOSS software for it for free. He would have been a rockstar if he happened 10 years later.

[starshipeleven]

I think that what you said is not what is behind what make him leave..

It actually is. He didn't just quit, he ragequit.

This isn't about the difficulty of the task, but about how bad he was at managing pressure and emotions.

He had some hilarious meltdowns on this very forum where he shouted at bridgeman for the same old story about the AMD driver/firmware thing from decades ago.

If you can't fucking get over something no matter how bad in ten years, or at least pretend to for the sake of rebuilding your own life, then you're a crybaby, plain and simple.

He have done a lot of his capabilities, effort, and life, and nobody at some Companies, recognized the work..

So what? "doing your best and failing" is a common occurrence in human life. Does not matter that what he failed at was some crazy hard programming, the emotional impact is still the same as anyone else's as he is still human.

If you go back in time, we can speak about Mr. Stallman, that was considered by the CIA a threat to Nacional Security, only because he wanted openSource, he was followed, pressured, and so on, at the point that he doesn't use a car( because it has GPS ), he doesn't use a credit card, because its tracked, he doesn't have a id card to open doors because its tracked, he doesn't own cellphone, and so on...

That's just his own paranoia, it serves no real purpose.
He is just one of many high-profile activists they lazily keep tabs on, nothing he actually does can be compromised and harm anyone, at most they can draw some funny things on his presentation slides or something. Killing him is not beneficial for any party involved either.

Can we imagine the damage inflicted to a brilliant person, with psychological warfare?

The only psychological warfare that can break a man comes from his own mind. Which is also what happened to libv.

[anarsoul]

It actually is. He didn't just quit, he ragequit.

<snip>

If you can't fucking get over something no matter how bad in ten years, or at least pretend to for the sake of rebuilding your own life, then you're a crybaby, plain and simple.

<snip>

Wow, so much hate in a single post. libv did a lot for lima project (I didn't follow his other projects, sorry). It was his hobby (or even more than hobby) and he wasn't paid for that. So he could quit whenever and however he wanted to.

I guess you have to think whether 'if you can't get over something in N years' applies to yourself.