"ARM, maker of microprocessors and microcontrollers used in mobile and embedded electronics, has joined the Linux Foundation. Amanda McPherson, vice president, marketing and developer programs, at The Linux Foundation said in the announcement 'By joining the Linux Foundation, ARM is demonstrating its commitment to open standards and Linux.' To date, ARM has shipped more than 10 billion ARM processors in mobile devices, many of which run Linux. Ian Drew, EVP Marketing at ARM, said that 'joining the Linux Foundation is a natural step towards advancing innovation in the Linux community for a rich, always-connected, computing experience.'"
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Member since:
2006-01-03
I hope this means that ARM will actively contribute Linux drivers and documentation for all their peripherals.
Though ARM devices are pretty well supported, ARM is still very secretive about many bits, which are still undocumented but for proprietary software: For example, had Gazelle - their native Java instruction set - been open, maybe Android would have not felt the need to design their Dalvik VM and would've gone for plain Java, getting higher performance and lower power at the same time. Now it is too late, unfortunately; a large opportunity has been missed.
I think their 3D cores are undocumented also, and also there exist peripherals for which the documentation is available, but no Linux drivers have been written (SPI ports, CAN ports and some such things).
Member since:2006-06-21
ARM doesn't make processors, it only does the research and licenses the specifications to 3rd parties, who in turn build the actual stuff. So it stands to reason they can't give all that inside knowledge to the Linux kernel for free, since it would negate their entire business model. Everybody would get the specs, leaving them with nothing to sell.
Member since:2005-07-06
Mate - heard of this wonderful thing called 'patents'? even if they disclose all the specifications the patents they hold would still require the produces to pay a licence/royalty to ARM.
Member since:2006-06-21
You're confusing "processors built to certain ARM specs" with "software that runs on ARM processors built to certain ARM specs". There are plenty parts of the world where software is not patentable. Even where it is, the above distinction can make quite a difference. Plus, in order to make it into FOSS the code would have to be licensed as GPLv2 or perhaps even v3, which explicitly grants patent extemptions.
Edited 2009-09-17 07:57 UTC
Member since:2005-07-06
The issue was regarding:
Which has nothing to do with software; it is hardware, specifications which are covered by patents and hardware is patentable. I don't know where you came off talking about software because it isn't even relevant to ARM. ARM designs processors, they have parts of of the processor specification (HARDWARE!!!!!!!!!!!) which they don't disclose.
Again, hardware CAN and IS patentable - ARM aren't disclosing the full hardware specifications.
Edited 2009-09-17 08:06 UTC
