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List:       debian-devel
Subject:    Re: Upcoming Qt switch to OpenGL ES on arm64
From:       Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl () lkcl ! net>
Date:       2018-11-27 3:04:04
Message-ID: CAPweEDxVypC=wxAAemOhcjqVH6HgK4GOdK6avL118Oz6qUjD0g () mail ! gmail ! com
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On Fri, Nov 23, 2018 at 12:18 AM Lisandro Dami=C3=A1n Nicanor P=C3=A9rez Me=
yer
<perezmeyer@gmail.com> wrote:

> So: what's the best outcome for our *current* users? Again, pick only one=
.

here's a perspective that may not have been considered: how much
influence and effect on purchasing decisions would the choice made
have?

we know that proprietary embedded GPUs and associated proprietary
software are not just unethical, and cause huge problems, they also
hurt company profits and cause increases in support costs.

by complete contrast, when all the source code is libre-licensed, this
is what happens:

 http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Intel-and-Valve-collaborate-to-deve=
lop-open-source-graphics-drivers-1649632.html

basically what i am inviting you to consider is that in making this
decision, the one that supports, encourages and indirectly endorses
the continued propagation of proprietary 3D libraries is one that is
going to have a massive world-wide adverse financial impact over time.

i would therefore strongly recommend prioritising decisions that
support libre-licensed GPU firmware and PCIe GPU cards that have
libre-licensed source code.

if systems with etnaviv are "punished" for example by this decision,
that would not go down too well.  if people running older Radeon GPU
Cards (on the RockPro64 which has a 4x PCIe Card that easily runs at
2500 MBytes/sec) find that their cards perform badly, that is also not
going to go down well.

bottom line: your decisions here have far more impact than you may realise.

l.

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