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Open-Source Qualcomm GPU Driver Published
An anonymous reader writes "Not being content with the state of open source graphics drivers for Linux, a developer working for Texas Instruments has reverse-engineered his competitor's (Qualcomm) driver and written an open-source Snapdragon driver. With being tainted by legal documents at Texas Instruments, the developer, who is also involved with Linaro, had no other choice but to work on an open source graphics driver for his competitor in his free time. The open source Qualcomm Snapdragon/Adreno driver is called Freedreno."
I'm not an open source zealot, but I don't see anything unethical in what he did.
Anyone (w/ the expertise) could have taken the documentation on Qualcomm's snapdragon from their datasheets, and written a driver based on that to simulate its functionality. How is that cheating? It would only be cheating if he had somehow gotten hold of Qualcomm's original code and splashed it all over the internet. But what he did was something that anybody could have done - it ain't cheating if you figure out how on your own. Qualcomm's only case against him is if they have patents that he (accidentally) violated while writing those drivers. Otherwise, what he did was an independent piece of work, which he can release under any license.
Okay, he's written open source drivers for his competitor, but is TI's own driver open source, or would someone outside TI have to do the same thing to them?