ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Oliver Grawert <ogra@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi,
On Sa, 2013-03-02 at 03:05 +0530, naz wrote:
> I apologize if the question is off topic. 
> 
> Here's some context - I was compiling Ubuntu touch for my note 2 and
> while extracting the proprietary blobs, had all these questions. Would
> appreciate if you can throw any light.
> 
> Do Oems when manufacturing devices have to deal with blobs? e.g. does
> Apple or Google or  Samsung etc. get access to say BCM4334
> specifications to write the drivers themselves or does broadcomm
> provide the source code for device drivers which in  turn is optimized
> by oems or do the oems just have to live with binary blobs? 
> 
> Recently I came across this device,  Notion Ink's Adam.  The
> manufacturers were claiming that they weren't able to release an ICS
> update because nvdia wasn't releasing a camera driver. Is this really
> possible?  When manufacturers ink a deal with hardware makers don't
> they get access to source code. 
> 

totally depends on the contract ... there are surely some where you only
get your initial set of blobs ... there are others where your in house
devs have to sign NDAs with the manufacturer to get access to the source
and there are surely also the ones like the one you describe in your
last paragraph where i sold you a car but you missed to read in the fine
print that upgrades for the wheels aren't included :)

ciao
	oli

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