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Ask Harald Welte, "VIA's open source representative"

Posted by Roblimo on from the meet-a-free-software-renaissance-man dept.

In this recent Slashdot post kernel hacker Harald Welte was characterized as "VIA's open source representative," but that is just one of many irons he has in the fire, as a glance at his Wikipedia bio will show. You can obviously ask Harald about many interesting things besides VIA's open source strategy — and before you ask about VIA, you ought to read the last few entries on his blog, at least one of which mentions VIA questions he can't answer. But VIA aside, there's plenty to ask Harald about. For example, he won an award from the FSF earlier this year for his work on gpl-violations.org. In any case, Harald is a powerful force for GNU/Linux and Free Software, and we appreciate him taking time out of his undoubtedly hectic schedule to answer your questions. (Usual Slashdot interview rules apply.)

5 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. S3 & Via by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Can you illuminate the relationship between S3 and Via for us? I've tried in the past getting basic technical specs (e.g. textures per pass, triangle rates, pps, fill rates) on the video hardware that comes with Via boards. This kind of information is readily available from other manufacturers, and occasionally a whitepaper will show up from Via or S3 for a random chipset, but asking Via for this kind of information results in stacks of legal forms to be signed in duplicate, allegedly because of NDA's between Via and S3. Yet, S3 bills itself as "a VIA Technologies, Inc. joint venture company". Doing open source work, I've avoided the NDA entanglements, and ultimately went to ATI for video hardware because I could find specs reliably without 'buying one of each' (this was actually suggested to me). Mostly it's all very confusing for people who just want to develop stuff, and I wonder how this relationship affects the open source drivers and the stuff that's not currently available (3D, hardware media decoding) but is essential for some embedded work.

    The related question would be does Via realize that we're out here and want to buy their hardware but are being forced to rule out Via due to secretiveness?

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  2. Hardware acceleration going forward by Kjella · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From your blog:

    One of the commonly asked questions is _why_ not the complete source, including codec acceleration, TV out and 3D was published. I cannot disclose the particular reasons for VIA, sorry. (...)

    I think we know the usual story here, and since the whole point of DRM is security through obscurity I understand that VIA can't release that. What I would like to ask you though is whether VIA has or is taking any steps to separate the parts that ought to be available from the rest so that more functionality can be exposed to open source drivers? For example, I own a HDV camera and hardware acceleration of that footage should be a natural feature distinct from say AACS-protected media. It's much the same with AMD, UVD/UVD+ will probably never be open sourced but UVD2 may be modular enough to release. Had AMD been earlier into that with their open source strategy it probably would have happened. Intel is also working on support for H.264/VC-1 decode with their new G45 chipset, though there seems to be work to be done on the Linux API side as well. How do you see the chances, from VIAs side, that you will release specifications to enable hardware decoding for coming products?

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    1. Re:Hardware acceleration going forward by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a sad, sad kind of DRM that requires bleeding TV OUTPUT to be DRM'd. Like, MacroVision or some completely pointless shit such as that.

      And H.264 decoding assists? Fuck me sideways they're stupid if they think this will stop people from decoding H.264 video on Free Software: it's not, and those people will just go patronize AMD or Intel instead.

  3. I'm sure this is the most common question by tietokone-olmi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So I'll just go ahead and ask it, get it over with.

    Is VIA planning to release detailed register-level specs for their graphics chipsets?

  4. Drivers Drivers Drivers by dan+the+person · · Score: 4, Insightful

    VIA has a history of releasing chipsets packed full of great video acceleration, but no drivers to make use of that acceleration, sometimes there are even no windows drivers either.

    Looking at the linux drivers for instance[1], there are big gaps, and it is disapointing to see no drivers to support the base MPEG4 acceleration let alone new features such as h.264 acceleration.

    I have an EPIA SP8000E and the MPEG2 acceleration (XvMC) implemented by the openchrome drivers is awesome, such a shame more than that cannot be supported.

    VIA has once again re-launched their linux drivers[2], and once again the support is very limited, only a small number of distributions, a small number of chipsets, and a small number of hardware features supported. Furthermore applications that can make use of these drivers features are almost non-existent

    Wouldn't it be better to work with the the established driver teams such as openchrome, who have broad distribution support, broad chipset support, and are broadly supported by applications, to add the missing hardware support?

    [1]http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=HardwareCaveats
    [2]http://linux.via.com.tw