[libre-riscv-dev] porting AMDVLK to the Libre RISC-V 3D GPU: NLNet EUR 50, 000 Grant application

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Oct 1, 2019 at 8:38 PM Michael Pham <pham.michael.98 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've responded to the whole amd graphics driver dispute off list. So
> let's return to the subject of RADV with technical arguments.

bearing in mind that we're "shelling" either RADV or AMDVLK by ripping
out its LLVM-amdgpu portion and replacing it with LLVM-RISC-V-SimpleV

> First of
> all, even though RADV was basically started by Dave, he's not that
> involved with the development anymore and many other Mesa developers
> are working on it instead. We shouldn't throw away the possibility of
> using RADV just because of the person who started it -- that would be,
> in my opinion, disrespectful of everyone else working on RADV by
> ignoring their contributions.

indeed.

> Secondly, if we do forget about RADV, then we should forget about
> using AMDVLK as well for the obvious reason that AMDVLK is by AMD that
> Luc seems to be so antagonistic towards.

ah this is for different reasons: AMD was just being a
proprietary-bonehead, and enough pressure sorted that out.  David
Airlie *DELIBERATELY* sabotaged Luc's efforts to get the documentation
and source code from AMD out the door, costing Luc - *PERSONALLY* -
time, money, and clients.

> And we can continue to forget
> about Intel and ARM drivers as well because, well, as you can see on
> Luc's blog is antagonistic towards them as well.

no: again, they're (again), just being proprietary-boneheads.  intel's
listened, and fixed that.  ARM reacted by being the *ONLY* Company -
IN THE WORLD - to have a PERSON named and targetted in its NDAs.

ARM actually added clauses into their NDAs specifically demanding that
the signatory SPECIFICALLY ostracise and refuse to work with, fund, or
collaborate with, Luc Verhaegen.

ARM also threatened (blackmailed) the company that funded the initial
lima reverse-engineering, by cutting off funding and contracts, until
Luc had been fired.

so whilst Intel was just being a "Corporate Bureaucratic BoneHead",
ARM has been unnnbelievably dishonest and unethical.


> My point is that we
> shouldn't let Luc's accusations (true or not) stop us from reusing any
> of these drivers because at that point we might as well just ignore
> every corporation's open-source contributions.

again: this is a misunderstanding of the situation.  Luc has had to
withstand both personal *and* Corporate-sponsored *systematic*
attacks, just for doing the "right thing" and for being honest.

he's been slandered, blackmailed, ostracised and more - just for
having the skill and the desire to help break the hold that
Corporations have over users.

and other free software developers *aided and abetted* in those attacks!  why??


> For example, Microsoft
> has done some very unethical things in the past and also has
> contributed code to the Linux kernel. What are you going to do? Fork
> the Linux kernel and rip out Microsoft's code?

of course not.  it doesn't work that way.  they changed their minds:
commercial market forces saw to that.

> The RISC-V Foundation
> has acted unethical as well by not being as open as they claim. What
> are we going to do? Throw away all our work because it's based on
> RISC-V?

actually, with no front-end having been written yet, there's no reason
why we shouldn't switch to MIPS or PowerPC.

> I think you get what I'm trying to say.

i do.

> Thirdly.... ahhh I forgot what else I was trying to say :( If I
> remember I'll send out another email.

:)

l.