Related
So, having caught up on my reading about the Kaiser using standard software video drivers instead of hardware I have to ask what to me is an obvious question:
Why can one of our chefs not "acquire" the drivers from a WM6 device with the same chip and bake them into a Kaiser ROM?
Incidentally does the chip vendor have any reference drivers?
Or am I missing something here?
James
No reference drivers are available.
Attempts have been made at making drivers from another device using the same chip work on our HTC products, so far it got us nothing.
We won't see a new HTC device using the same chipset again so "porting" drivers from a newer HTC product is also out of the question.
So.....
Either HTC coughs up the drivers.
Someone with a lot of spare time and intimare knowledge "rips" the drivers from another device such as the LG KS20.
Someone with even more time and knowledge writes new drivers (not very likely to say the least).
undac said:
Someone with a lot of spare time and intimare knowledge "rips" the drivers from another device such as the LG KS20.
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Chainfire already tried this if anybody bothers to read through the OpenGL ES thread, especially, the new people near the end of the thread.
Nobody has tried to cook a rom of it though that I know of, and cooking means all of the linked driver files, not this one file people are passing around like a pot hit.
However, I think Chainfire was pretty thorough and it's not likely cooking would be any more successful.
a KS20 ROM can be ported to Kaiser? (i mean, all generic and hardware drivers) and then make an Hybrid with another kaiser WM6 or WM6.1 rom? it could work..
NuShrike said:
Chainfire already tried this if anybody bothers to read through the OpenGL ES thread, especially, the new people near the end of the thread.
Nobody has tried to cook a rom of it though that I know of, and cooking means all of the linked driver files, not this one file people are passing around like a pot hit.
However, I think Chainfire was pretty thorough and it's not likely cooking would be any more successful.
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From what I can remember Chainfire did try to cook it (he was refering to constant reflashing in the other thread).
And all due respect to Chainfire but I'm sure he's not the only person in the world who could potentially pull this off.
From my point of view he just proved that it certainly isn't going to be easy, not that it is impossible.
undac said:
From what I can remember Chainfire did try to cook it (he was refering to constant reflashing in the other thread).
And all due respect to Chainfire but I'm sure he's not the only person in the world who could potentially pull this off.
From my point of view he just proved that it certainly isn't going to be easy, not that it is impossible.
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Indeed I did do multiple attempts of cooking, with uncountable different versions, hacks, etc. You don't even want to know all the things I've done to get it to work. In the end it was all fruitless and I decided I had spent enough precious time on it without satisfactory results. I don't believe it is impossible at all (just nasty) and there are probably a sizable number of people, some here on XDA, even who could possibly do it, given enough time and access to relevant devices. I am neither a noob nor a novice in these matters, but I will happily admit that this is beyond me and will remain so unless I spend a couple hundred more hours ont it (which I won't - sure I have many more ideas how to fix the remaining issues, but I have a company to run and don't think it's worth it).
Furthermore, another reason I stopped trying to do it is because the KS20 drivers have their own issues, so even if it did work, it's still is not a fix-all solution, which eventually makes the whole thing not worth investing hundreds of hours. Not to say it would be impossible to combine the good from Kaiser with the good from KS20 etc. It's a time thing.
It's also possible the WM6.1 releases resolve a couple of compatibility issues - though not very likely - to be honest I haven't even looked at that yet.
As for the D3Dm file that is going around... Complete and utter nonsense, as posted in other threads (with explenation), don't let it get you.
Sorry if I'm thread jacking.
Chainfire,
It seems that the official response from HTC has quieted us down a lot. I'm not seeing very much going on anymore since then. Have we all kinda lost hope and feel it's time to throw in the towel? Or maybe it's just in my head and we are all still fighting hard to get HTC to fix this for us.
Also, I read a lot of replies where HTC said they are working on a fix for mid to late feb but I think those were false reports.
ericc191 said:
Sorry if I'm thread jacking.
Chainfire,
It seems that the official response from HTC has quieted us down a lot. I'm not seeing very much going on anymore since then. Have we all kinda lost hope and feel it's time to throw in the towel? Or maybe it's just in my head and we are all still fighting hard to get HTC to fix this for us.
Also, I read a lot of replies where HTC said they are working on a fix for mid to late feb but I think those were false reports.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Things are still going on, all I can say (just painstakingly slow)
This may help...
I was recently at the "pocket hack master" website (i cant remember the name of the company) and as far as I know, they are trying to work out a solution to the qualcomm chip in our kaisers... I doubt theyll be able to provide the missing drivers, but hopefully will atleast provide a boost in the screen response for our phones.
I think the pocket hack master guys are trying to find a way to overclock the processor, not write new drivers for it. It would help response times to overclock but It won't make up for the lack of drivers. Just imagine if we had those drivers and were able to overclock. I would be pretty sure-footed about bragging that my phone was an Iphone killer. Our phone has the potential to be a bad motherfu$%er, I just wish that HTC gave a ****e about what it's customer base thought, and less about how much money they can milk out of each device. If they released those drivers, in my opinion they would have created the Iphone killer before the damn Iphone even reared it's fruity face. I used to take pride in owning HTC devices, they were the best devices available at one time. Tides have changed, and now HTC's got some competition, and in my opinion, they are failing to stand their ground. I still love my kaiser, but next time I buy a device this whole driver debacle is gonna be whispering over my shoulder telling me to go for the Eten glofiish, or some other windows mobile device, and in the end, may be the deciding factor in leaving behind my high school mobile sweetheart. Dammit I want them drivers lol. Anyways, rant over. Sorry for threadjackin'. Cheers!
sWuRv said:
I think the pocket hack master guys are trying to find a way to overclock the processor, not write new drivers for it. It would help response times to overclock but It won't make up for the lack of drivers. Just imagine if we had those drivers and were able to overclock. I would be pretty sure-footed about bragging that my phone was an Iphone killer. Our phone has the potential to be a bad motherfu$%er, I just wish that HTC gave a ****e about what it's customer base thought, and less about how much money they can milk out of each device. If they released those drivers, in my opinion they would have created the Iphone killer before the damn Iphone even reared it's fruity face. I used to take pride in owning HTC devices, they were the best devices available at one time. Tides have changed, and now HTC's got some competition, and in my opinion, they are failing to stand their ground. I still love my kaiser, but next time I buy a device this whole driver debacle is gonna be whispering over my shoulder telling me to go for the Eten glofiish, or some other windows mobile device, and in the end, may be the deciding factor in leaving behind my high school mobile sweetheart. Dammit I want them drivers lol. Anyways, rant over. Sorry for threadjackin'. Cheers!
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couldnt agree more, well said. im sure we'll find a fix soon enough, there are a lot of talented individuals who dwell on this site... something will rise from the abyss, i can feel the breakthrough coming lol and we'll all shout from the rooftops... "haha apple, victory is mine" like stewey griffin but till that day... we'll just have to wait and wait and wait for htc to tilt some new drivers our way. but yes... rant over
Chainfire said:
Furthermore, another reason I stopped trying to do it is because the KS20 drivers have their own issues, so even if it did work, it's still is not a fix-all solution, which eventually makes the whole thing not worth investing hundreds of hours. Not to say it would be impossible to combine the good from Kaiser with the good from KS20 etc. It's a time thing.
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I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
Thanks Chainfire.
NuShrike said:
I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
Thanks Chainfire.
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The MSM7200 is more powerful than what's in the DS and PSP? lol
NuShrike said:
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
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Wll not quite as good as the PSP but certainly a bit better than the DS, according to Qualcomms own comparison charts at least.
ericc191 said:
The MSM7200 is more powerful than what's in the DS and PSP? lol
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Click to collapse
Unless you'd just agreed with me,
DS: yes (ARM9 + ARM7 + specialized multimedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Technical_specifications
PSP: toss-up (custom mips cores w custom chip support): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Design_and_specifications
page 4: http://brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2007/Tech-303_Ligon.pdf
NuShrike said:
I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everyone thanks for all the responses. Full disclosure: I work on the technical end of High Tech, although at the opposite extreme: Big, bad ass servers and clusters. I too am no ARM assembly guru, but I have messed quite extensively with some ARM based home NAS devices. I'm not dissing anyone, but I guess I should have been more specific in my question and asked for more specific answers:
WinCE like the rest of the Windows family has standard APIs for graphics, with all the nasty, bare-metal stuff abstracted into device drivers (HAL/whatever). Current WinCE (i.e. WM) uses a (somewhat compatible with the Win32/64 systems) DirectX model. The other reason for doing this is so hardware vendors (I'm looking at YOU Qualcomm!) don't have to expose their IP to the world in return THEY have to code the drivers. It's more complicated here since the MSM7200 does more than just drive the display. However the graphics driver portion of the drivers will remain constant across implementations of the chip.
So: Can someone who's actually tried this explain the issues that they ran into when attempting to extract the drivers from another device's ROM and run them on the Kaiser? Is there a list somewhere of systems that use the MSM7200 with WinCE? If we make this a community effort then we can eliminate dead ends very quickly.
Additionally, since HTC seems to be a lost cause: Has anyone approached Qualcomm directly? Something along the lines of: "You're taking a black eye with a very influential group of developers, early adopters and enthusiats. All you have to do to fix this is release the WinCE reference binary graphics drivers for the MSM7200 (no open source required!) to the xda developers forum and let them carry it from there. It doesn't cost you anything, doesn't open up any IP that couldn't be reverse engineered from existing products by a competitor anyway, and it earns you acclimation with an influential group and the type of positive publicity money can't buy. It shouldn't hurt your customer HTC either as they aren't responsible for support for non-official firmware anyway. If the carriers are worried about unlocking, that horse has bolted already, and making the graphics driver issue die down would radically decrease the publicity associated with the device and hence the odds of a carrier user discovering the unlock tools. From a licensing perspective, presumably HTC gets an end-user license with each chip anyway, even if they chose (unwisely) to not integrate and distribute the MSM7200's hardware accelerated graphics drivers."
It's called negotiation. Respect the IP, explain the impact in financial and business terms of future sales, decreased sales risk, and positive publicity. (It helps to try not to look or sound like Eric Raymond too... )
If anyone from Qualcomm is lurking and reading this, feel free to PM me. I'd be only too happy to explain how one "sells" this sort of thing internally to management. Been there, done that, printed my own damn T-shirts.
I don't know SpecG, would someone who does know the organization comment on any applicability here?
James
friends.. Im so sad with the performance in Divx of kaiser.. I had a hermes, and it is great running high quality divx..
I think the driver solution will come with WM7, I hope!!!
and if we make an overclock? L26 wm6.1 comes with an app to overclock kaiser...
jgmdean said:
So: Can someone who's actually tried this explain the issues that they ran into when attempting to extract the drivers from another device's ROM and run them on the Kaiser?
[snip]
Additionally, since HTC seems to be a lost cause: Has anyone approached Qualcomm directly?
[snip]
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Even when all dependencies from grabbing all of the KS20 driver files have been satisfied, booting with the KS20 DDI.dll will cause the Kaiser to hang. There's some hardware specifics either cooked in, or something is misunderstood/missed.
Can't expect a driver blob from Qualcomm because rumor has it they themselves don't have any drivers. They were so closed on IP, they wouldn't even let ATI write some drivers for them, and so Qualcomm did a ****e job trying. So rumor has it that Qualcomm is being more humble now, but it's one of those situations where Qualcomm hardware is nothing more than a poison pill.
i like to thank Chainfire for all the effort he has done
and slowly all experts are goin to collect info and miising pieces
and probably after some time we will have a solution
Anyway another thing is overclocking which might helped a bit and since even that isnt here either think we stuck for a while thanks for your time
satiros
Just a question : Did somebody of skilled cheafs around here take a look into HTC Shift drivers (as far as I now this device have also Qualcom MSM 7200 and Intel Intel Stealey) ?
ok saw a post on the sprint hero boards and wanted to ask over here aswell since the g1 area has a lot more developers for it.
would porting webOS to an android phone seem possible? I had a palm pre for a bit was cool and fast, I like android more but the thought of running it would be cool
Noooooooooo
You mean porting over apps?
or running webOS on your phone?
In a word:
No.
In more words:
We need drivers. There are no WebOS drivers for Android devices. Many of the existing drivers that we need are proprietary, meaning (and I'm not sure on this part) most likely the hardware specifications necessary to write drivers are closed as well. If they are not closed, it would be possible--but not for a team of geeks like XDA. You'd need a major entity, like Google, to do it, which won't happen. Besides, not all of WebOS is completely open-source, just like not ALL of what goes into Android phones is. It's just not possible--even if the driver issue could be overcome, which it can't.
Yet another word:
This is a question, so it belongs in Q&A. Not to be a jerk or anything, but just letting you know, so next time you can post there.
Doesn't seem possible at this current time however I disagree with the post above if all of xda devs came together then it might be possible due to the fact cyanogen im guessing could make his own drivers etc. However as said above it would not be possible due to the fact it is not completely open-source
ps: Why would you want webOS it is nothing compared to android - IF you agree then post back with this a smile ^_^
xillius200 said:
Doesn't seem possible at this current time however I disagree with the post above if all of xda devs came together then it might be possible due to the fact cyanogen im guessing could make his own drivers etc. However as said above it would not be possible due to the fact it is not completely open-source
ps: Why would you want webOS it is nothing compared to android - IF you agree then post back with this a smile ^_^
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Click to collapse
Have you ever written a device driver? You need detailed spec of the interfaces of the piece of hardware you're trying to talk to. Without them you're trying to build the Empire State Building blindfolded with a teaspoon and pair of pliers.
linuxluver said:
Have you ever written a device driver? You need detailed spec of the interfaces of the piece of hardware you're trying to talk to. Without them you're trying to build the Empire State Building blindfolded with a teaspoon and pair of pliers.
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Click to collapse
Okay so simply put we would need MacGyver to write the drivers...
you know, none of this is true, as the drivers for all of the HTC android phones have the drivers built into the kernel (as opposed to running as modules with the exception of wifi) because of GPL, they have released this information, albeit kinda late (*cough* CDMA hero) one stumbling block is how WebOS is going to interface with the drivers may be different, keep in palm has its kernel modifications "drivers" also available (once again because of GPL) so if interfacing is different, it COULD possibly be reverse engineered... the actual WebOS platform IS closed source however, making this all much much more difficult.
http://developer.htc.com/
http://opensource.palm.com/
dont let anyone tell you its impossible, its not. Are you going to port it? No, if you had to start this thread, then its not likely.
mbazdell said:
Okay so simply put we would need MacGyver to write the drivers...
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Click to collapse
rofl..............
Napoleon said:
Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.
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Click to collapse
That said I like my android
linuxluver said:
Have you ever written a device driver? You need detailed spec of the interfaces of the piece of hardware you're trying to talk to. Without them you're trying to build the Empire State Building blindfolded with a teaspoon and pair of pliers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Also yeah without knowing about the phone it is like building the empire state building. That's why you buy the phone open it up find details on the phone first off and try and figure it out by taking a long look and experimenting otherwise you will never get anywhere. It is like life without actually doing it and just saying about it you will never achieve it so you do it
If Cyanogen or another dev decided to do this it is not impossible as long as they know how to build a device driver which i know 4 of the devs on here can do it is not impossible. The question is would they actually do this project?
Personally I do not see a point in this project if you wanted a webOS why didn't you buy a palm sry if i may sound a little rude but it is the truth why buy a android?
If i may have sounded rude in the sentence above i am very sry you can shun me down
xillius200 said:
For linux once never went my way and stop having a go i was just voicing my opinion it is a free country im just saying with cyanogenmod, Wesgarner, Ctso, Kingklick etc. we stand a great chance at doing it and i bet cyan must have made a device driver before. so please don't go off on one i don't care if this get's made as stated below android is better anyway so get off my back linuxluver and stop being a jackass all I was trying to say is it could be done and not impossible you are making it sound like we have no hope in hell.
ps: I only wan't to come on here to chat and make friends not to be abused
ps2: Also yeah without knowing about the phone it is like building the empire state building. That's why you buy the phone open it up find details on the phone first off and try and figure it out without taking a long look and experimenting you will never get anywhere. It is like life without actually doing it and just saying about it you will never achieve it so you do it
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You really have no idea whatsoever as to how computer hardware works. Like the other person said, there just isn't a chance in hell of a small group of people working in their free time without the cooperation of hardware manufacturers to do what you're saying.
Look at AOSP, think of all the people working on it, and we still don't have everything working on it correctly. And that's with an open-source OS, not to mention Android was meant to use on these HTC phones anyway.
Web OS is really nice but doesn't seem very popular considering only 2 phones have it while. 10+ phones will come out with Android. I bet if this was done the person asking would use it for like a month then go to another ROM. Which means all that work trying to make drivers would go in vain.
xencor said:
You really have no idea whatsoever as to how computer hardware works. Like the other person said, there just isn't a chance in hell of a small group of people working in their free time without the cooperation of hardware manufacturers to do what you're saying.
Look at AOSP, think of all the people working on it, and we still don't have everything working on it correctly. And that's with an open-source OS, not to mention Android was meant to use on these HTC phones anyway.
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Click to collapse
So is a small group of people not good enough look at bill gates for example creator of microsoft started of with the apple man 2 people now we have microsoft windows and apple so are you saying a small group of people can't do something amazing every now and again?
Also i do not care about webOS i hate webOS in fact i just wanted to extract my opinion and further fourth nothing is impossible look at wireless electricity about a few years ago seen as a myth now look at it. This could be done one day maybe not now but sometime in the future. Most of webOS is in java anyway and most of it is using dbus.
I thought that emulating it on a jvm may be possible? like freedsb running over the top of windows in a vm.
Also all those who port drivers from windows to linux and max to windows etc. have no help from the manafacturers and they still manage to do it and they work alone.
Im not going to voice my opinion in this thread again i have had enough with people who don't let people talk their mind all it was was an opinion nothing more and a possible chance of it working instead of it sounding like it's impossible unless you try you will never know and that is that stuff this thread i have had enough with you people i am out of here don't bother replying to this because i will not read it.
xillius200 said:
So is a small group of people not good enough look at bill gates for example creator of microsoft started of with the apple man 2 people now we have microsoft windows so youre point is?
Also i do not care about webOS i hate webOS in fact i just wanted to extract my opinion and further fourth nothing is impossible look at wireless electricity about a few years ago seen as a myth now look at it. This could be done one day maybe not now but sometime in the future.
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Click to collapse
Do the developers on XDA have a source of revenue that I'm unaware of? Do they have billions of dollars in profits that spurn growth and encourage new, more experienced developers to join the business and help? Is there even a business at all?
The answer is no. There is no R&D department behind XDA. There is no venture capital firm supporting cyanogen or kingklick with money.
Again, you really have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't just a "take open the phone, look at the serial number on the board, and then write your own driver." This is something that computer manufacturers spend years developing their own proprietary code and then design specific chipsets to work with it. Years and money, lots and lots of money.
And you're still forgetting that webOS and even parts of android are not open sourced, which complicates it even further, even to the extent of making a webOS port technically illegal under copyright laws.
xencor said:
not to mention Android was meant to use on these HTC phones anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not 100% true, both android and WebOS run on top of the linux kernel, drivers are already written, like I said, its not a rewrite of drivers, rather interfacing with hardware may be different, but thanks to GPL, we can more easily figure out how the software interfaces with the drivers since we have drivers (albeit for some different hardware) for both Palm AND Android devices... obviously this would all be no easy task... but hell, android work tits on my Kaiser, with the radio/sms/wifi/camera/gps.... and it WASN'T designed to run android!
something else to mention I suppose is the work done to get Mer Linux (Open source replacement for Maemo) running on the Kaiser/Vogue, it booted and its X system worked enough to get to setup information, albeit the screen was too low of a res to do much and it has far too little ram to be useful... let me put it this way... it would be entirely possible for someone to port WebOS over, though the radio/BT/Wifi/accel/etc. may not work initially. I'd be stoked to try out test builds, and I think so would MANY other people.
*broken down: android wasnt meant to run on these phones, linux was meant to, and android was meant to run on top of that*
xencor said:
Do the developers on XDA have a source of revenue that I'm unaware of? Do they have billions of dollars in profits that spurn growth and encourage new, more experienced developers to join the business and help? Is there even a business at all?
The answer is no. There is no R&D department behind XDA. There is no venture capital firm supporting cyanogen or kingklick with money.
Again, you really have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't just a "take open the phone, look at the serial number on the board, and then write your own driver." This is something that computer manufacturers spend years developing their own proprietary code and then design specific chipsets to work with it. Years and money, lots and lots of money.
And you're still forgetting that webOS and even parts of android are not open sourced, which complicates it even further, even to the extent of making a webOS port technically illegal under copyright laws.
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Click to collapse
I have already said in my earlier post that it is not open-source so read b4 you post and even the smallest one man on his own can do someting incredible look at DA cracked the psp 14-15yo and wrote his own drivers and software and look at the ps3 hacker who has found exploit through the memory neither of them have a company or backing just normal people and are you saying that is not possible?
i will not talk any longer all in all webOS is a stupid idea it could be possible one day and end of
ps: I don't like but jmhalder is cool
jmhalder said:
not 100% true, both android and WebOS run on top of the linux kernel, drivers are already written, like I said, its not a rewrite of drivers, rather interfacing with hardware may be different, but thanks to GPL, we can more easily figure out how the software interfaces with the drivers since we have drivers (albeit for some different hardware) for both Palm AND Android devices... obviously this would all be no easy task... but hell, android work tits on my Kaiser, with the radio/sms/wifi/camera/gps.... and it WASN'T designed to run android!
something else to mention I suppose is the work done to get Mer Linux (Open source replacement for Maemo) running on the Kaiser/Vogue, it booted and its X system worked enough to get to setup information, albeit the screen was too low of a res to do much and it has far too little ram to be useful... let me put it this way... it would be entirely possible for someone to port WebOS over, though the radio/BT/Wifi/accel/etc. may not work initially. I'd be stoked to try out test builds, and I think so would MANY other people.
*broken down: android wasnt meant to run on these phones, linux was meant to, and android was meant to run on top of that*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for talking some sense on the subject that it is possible thank you very much i respect you because you think anything is possible you may go far in the world. the one's who never try may never know and for that will fall behind. You are the only one on here who talks sense and for that i applaud you
ps: Very Much thanks from Xillius200 for believing it to be possible instead of just shooting it down
ps2: It takes a true person to not give up and takes a less person to give up straight away so never give up
xillius200 said:
I have already said in my earlier post that it is not open-source so read b4 you post and even the smallest one man on his own can do someting incredible look at DA cracked the psp 14-15yo and wrote his own drivers and software and look at the ps3 hacker who has found exploit through the memory neither of them have a company or backing just normal people and are you saying that is not possible?
i will not talk any longer all in all webOS is a stupid idea it could be possible one day and end of
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
DA did not write his own drivers. "Cracking" and using existing drivers is not nearly the same thing, nor is using a loophole in a PS3 memory chip.
Again, i'm sorry, but you just have no idea what you're talking about.
As someone else has pointed out by now, it might actually be possible to get webOS on an android phone, but that's only because the drivers already exist, not because cyanogen and XDA are gods and can do what you're proposing.
xencor said:
DA did not write his own drivers. "Cracking" and using existing drivers is not nearly the same thing, nor is using a loophole in a PS3 memory chip.
Again, i'm sorry, but you just have no idea what you're talking about.
As someone else has pointed out by now, it might actually be possible to get webOS on an android phone, but that's only because the drivers already exist, not because cyanogen and XDA are gods and can do what you're proposing.
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Click to collapse
I am not calling them gods writing different drivers seperate to a device is possible and DA did write some of his own drivers for the psp for addons and linking to the pc. Also to gain access to the memory he had to make a device and write a driver for it that devices already came wth a driver but he wrote his own. This was a different person XD
And i have had enough i am out of here dont know why the hell we are argueing you do not know much about android either so leave it at that and keep the forum open
I here by cease this fighting going on and say good day
First, let me say up front that I have the utmost respect for the developers in the Captivate forum. It's a handicapped device that has much more potential than I think we'll ever be able to tap, simply because there isn't much motivation for Samsung to fix its biggest issues. Let's face it: The things we like most about our favorite Android handsets are precisely the things that make them seem "too complex" to the non non-technical general public. I think that the Galaxy S line has been a huge dissapointment to enthusiasts, and a big "ooh, ahh" for the iPhone-types.
That being said, let me move on to my main gripe: Through my Droid Incredible, I fell in love with flashing ROMs. If it had a higher build number, I flashed it. And you know why? Because it was better a better build. Newer baseband versions fixed more problems than it caused. I could flash ROMs on a train versus needing to be at my desktop for an exhaustive multi-step shamble. And when ROMs were released from build to build, developers in general knew what to expect as far as results.
I simply can't say that that's true with the Captivate. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with this phone and it's idiocy. I hate having ROMs with "Beta 9.3.5" after their title. I hate that half of the releases are to take out some Samsung crap, replace it with some AOSP-like goodness, just to see what sticks.
Again, it's not a condemnation of the Devs. They have made this phone tolerable, which is no small task. I just think it's a sad state of affairs when an OS based on an open source foundation has been so brutally slapped together that it makes a phone with the looks and hardware specs of a Ferrari about as much fun to own and maintain as a Yugo.
Who's with me on this one?
EDIT:
I'm keeping my original post above, partly because there have been too many responses to make removing it reasonable, and partly because I'd like something to review the next time I decide to try and put my thoughts out there to the community.
I never imagined that I would draw so much criticism over this post. I honestly thought I did a pretty good job of making it apparent that I truly appreciate all of the developers' work. I'm a huge fan of the Android platform and of open source projects in general. Allow me to draw a poorly crafted and weak analogy, if I may:
I love my two-year old boy dearly. He's a fantastic kid and big bright spot in my life. He has asthma, and I really do hate providing his breathing treatments. It doesn't mean I'm not thankful for the technology that allows him to breathe, and I certainly wouldn't consider trading him in for a different model without such issues. I would, however, consider venting to other parents of an asthmatic child about how laborious the process of breathing treatments is, and how unfriendly it is towards children his age.
I'm not quite sure how I managed to come across as anti-open source, anti-developer, or at all unappreciative of our dedicated developers - but apparently that's exactly what I did, so for that I apologize. What is really awful is that with one well-intended post I feel that I have ostracized myself from a community that I thoroughly enjoy supporting.
So instead of being constructive... and building a ROM of your own or simply not using them, you're complaining? No one said you have to use them. No one said you have to update all the time.
Definitely not with you.
I think the fustration you're feeling is related to these only having being available to the masses for about 2 months. The modding community started with HTC phones, so they have the momentum. That being said the samsung community is making a lot of progress, and HTC/Samsung cross modding is in full swing. Be patient.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Thanks for your thoughts. I thought I had posted in "Captivate General", not "Captivate Troll." My mistake.
I have actually tried just about all the ROMs available. You may have noticed that I stated that this is not a Dev issue. I doubt many can do better than the talented developers we have here - I know I couldn't. Hell, even Samsung can't.
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
crayak said:
I think the fustration you're feeling is related to these only having being available to the masses for about 2 months. The modding community started with HTC phones, so they have the momentum. That being said the samsung community is making a lot of progress, and HTC/Samsung cross modding is in full swing. Be patient.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have a good point, and I have no problem waiting. I suppose I was just sharing my reflections.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I share you feelings somewhat. Thats why I picked a ROM (Cognition 2.1.6) and will stick with it until Froyo officially drops for the Captivate. I also hate having to restore a phone after a flash which is why I choose not to do it often.
vbhines said:
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I actually agree here. But this is sort of Google's thing in a lot of areas. Google Wave, Google Buzz etc. Google MASTERS searching. And everything else they throw stuff on a wall and some sticks and some don't. I worried about that with Android from the very beginning. They often times release half finished products and then allow the devs to finish (or not in some cases) the future of the product/service.
By going to 100 different carriers in 100 different iterations google may very well stop caring about the polished product and just allow the devs to do the rest.
When I had my HTC Hero I had a Flash addiction. Now I just have decided to stick with one build and update it when updates happen. There have been quite a few VERY recent improvements. SetIron's kernel is a fine example. Stuff is happening at a much faster pace than it was when I got my phone 2 months ago. There are twice as many ROMS if not more. Things are going blow wide open when Official Froyo and its source code drop. I think there was stagnent developing at first because we all knew Froyo was coming. If we're lucky Froyo and Gingerbread will share the same kernel so porting IT won't be a big deal either.
FWIW, The Captivate hasn't been out anywhere near as long as the Incredible. Give the Devs some time - it can only get better.
rfarrah said:
FWIW, The Captivate hasn't been out anywhere near as long as the Incredible. Give the Devs some time - it can only get better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think his frustration is more that we have this incredible piece of hardware and the less than stellar job that Samsung has done to finish it off on the software side. If it wasn't for the devs/cookers I probably would have sold my Captivate by now, and I have only had it for 1 month, coming from a Milestone.
Samsung, hire some of these devs to fix your mess you call a kernel and os. Without the lagfixes from the devs this phone responds worse than my Milestone.
bradasmith said:
I think his frustration is more that we have this incredible piece of hardware and the less than stellar job that Samsung has done to finish it off on the software side. If it wasn't for the devs/cookers I probably would have sold my Captivate by now, and I have only had it for 1 month, coming from a Milestone.
Samsung, hire some of these devs to fix your mess you call a kernel and os. Without the lagfixes from the devs this phone responds worse than my Milestone.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Thank you for saying what I was trying to, but in far fewer words.
the galaxy s phones might be the last of the phones not locked by the manufacturer. and i like the samsung software package but dislike that it only works if x or y componant is still there. i dont get the appeal of aosp for an every day rom but i get that it is a transition for porting other things, once we know what we need to make the phone work with aosp we can make it work with anything. and i think that people arent giving samsung enough credit for support on the device. the stock rom was buggy and jf7 came out and made things better, now we are waiting on froyo and im sure it will be better yet, if the the leaked copies are an indication then froyo should be quite good.
i think the multi step proceedures is dev preferance for clearing data, there have been roms that you can flash over and keep everything. the other issue is lagfixes which aren't available(or needed) on other devices. the lagfix is part of those oh sh!t moments where you need odin, also having odin available is another avenue for the devs. if we could only flash from recovery you would see alot more cockwork flashable roms that are compatable with multiple lagfixes.
i messed with an evo and really got an apreciation for samsung, i felt the evo was of low build quality and that odin flashing a rooted rom is much more convenient than the rage against the cage meathod of adb pushing files and rooting and recovery flashing. rooting a galaxy s is rediculously easy, just an update.zip, or an one click app on the phone, or a one click app on a pc. or for froyo a 3click kernel flash in odin then an update.zip. or flashing a rooted rom with odin.
i have made many noob mistakes and taken risks and got it running every time. i dont know about the incredible but i think with some other devices i would have either bricked or pulled all my hair out fixing it.
i was in the airforce and one thing that people always said was that the two best bases are the one you last came from and the next one you are going to. people were always telling stories about "back in kirkland...." and "when i get to misawa..." but people were always complaining about there current base. i have a fealing that in year or two when we have new phones we will see many thing we hate about those as well. and if we had motorolas we'd hate those and if we had incredibles we see the galaxy s playing asphalt 5 from samsung apps and be like if only my phone could do 3d like that one.
I have one issue with my phone, the GPS. While I'm mad it doesn't really work it's something I NEVER use. Other than that I'm running the latest Cognition rom and couldn't be happier.
gunnyman said:
.....Things are going blow wide open when Official Froyo and its source code drop. I think there was stagnent developing at first because we all knew Froyo was coming.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this is 100% the reason. I fully expect that there will be some amazing things done and some great roms released.
I don't know if it was mentioned or not already but the reason why there are so many beta versions of roms and why newer versions open up issues is for the same reason as above, no source code available. So be patient and I promise you'll be kicking yourself for making this thread.
I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.
i dont think apple is really copying xfce. ..macosx versions are terminal based and therefor unix like and very similar to linux. x11 window environments have been around for many year. xfce doesn't offer that much that i know of that isn't in others window managers. it is possible that the developers on all sides are taking ideas from each other, but i think since power user often have a lot of shortcuts setup to get through common tasks faster that they are implementing some of these things as presets. similarities can just as easily similar minds overcoming very common problems. granted many developers may be running alternate os's and may be inspired by the other. not that i dont believe in corperate espionage i certainly do but i think a lot of things are just obvious solutions.
the problem with phones is that the manufacturers can lock us out and the locks can be difficult to break. you are right that google doesnt own the os but the manufacturers have proprietary source along side the source that they must release because it was taken from google. at some point it makes development dificult. i think we need an emphasis on aosp to build roms from. not because i like the google software, i find it plain and ugly, but because once aosp is figured out there is more understanding of how it all fits together and ports become easier.
i just cant wait to see the day when we can custom order aosp compatible hardware and build phones based on what our priorities are and what we can afford. i know we cant actually solder the boards our selves with surface mount but it could be done on an assembly line with robots if a manufacturer decided to use them to there full potential.
vbhines said:
Thanks for your thoughts. I thought I had posted in "Captivate General", not "Captivate Troll." My mistake.
I have actually tried just about all the ROMs available. You may have noticed that I stated that this is not a Dev issue. I doubt many can do better than the talented developers we have here - I know I couldn't. Hell, even Samsung can't.
My point is that I think the Galaxy S line is a harbinger of things to come for Android. I hope I'm wrong, but as Android becomes increasingly mainstream, it also becomes increasingly less important to deliver function AND form.
The average consumer wants sexiness with phrases like "dual-core" listed in the specs, regardless of what the device can actually deliver.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I couldn't agree with your more about your criticism about Samsung - but I'm not sure how this applies for Android as a whole. The closest thing you can say is Android fails to exclude poorly performing companies - but that's not much of a statement, is it?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
GreenWolf70 said:
I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is one of the best posts I have read on this forum. What a great insight into the evolution of the smartphone, it damn near brought a tear to my eye and sure as hell made me proud to be an owner and defender of the ideal of Open Source. Sure, my Captivate isn't perfect, but I continue to try new ROM's and use my technical proficiency to try and reason out any bugs so as to provide useful feedback. In turn, these ROM's continue to get better and everyone profits.
I love you guys... *group hug*
Dani897 said:
the galaxy s phones might be the last of the phones not locked by the manufacturer. and i like the samsung software package but dislike that it only works if x or y componant is still there. i dont get the appeal of aosp for an every day rom but i get that it is a transition for porting other things, once we know what we need to make the phone work with aosp we can make it work with anything. and i think that people arent giving samsung enough credit for support on the device. the stock rom was buggy and jf7 came out and made things better, now we are waiting on froyo and im sure it will be better yet, if the the leaked copies are an indication then froyo should be quite good.
i think the multi step proceedures is dev preferance for clearing data, there have been roms that you can flash over and keep everything. the other issue is lagfixes which aren't available(or needed) on other devices. the lagfix is part of those oh sh!t moments where you need odin, also having odin available is another avenue for the devs. if we could only flash from recovery you would see alot more cockwork flashable roms that are compatable with multiple lagfixes.
i messed with an evo and really got an apreciation for samsung, i felt the evo was of low build quality and that odin flashing a rooted rom is much more convenient than the rage against the cage meathod of adb pushing files and rooting and recovery flashing. rooting a galaxy s is rediculously easy, just an update.zip, or an one click app on the phone, or a one click app on a pc. or for froyo a 3click kernel flash in odin then an update.zip. or flashing a rooted rom with odin.
i have made many noob mistakes and taken risks and got it running every time. i dont know about the incredible but i think with some other devices i would have either bricked or pulled all my hair out fixing it.
i was in the airforce and one thing that people always said was that the two best bases are the one you last came from and the next one you are going to. people were always telling stories about "back in kirkland...." and "when i get to misawa..." but people were always complaining about there current base. i have a fealing that in year or two when we have new phones we will see many thing we hate about those as well. and if we had motorolas we'd hate those and if we had incredibles we see the galaxy s playing asphalt 5 from samsung apps and be like if only my phone could do 3d like that one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GreenWolf70 said:
I am not a programmer, just a user with some technical expertise, but I love these open source OS's. I jumped on Linux as soon as MS Vista came out and the improvements and leaps forward by that community on the desktops has been amazing. When I opened a Win7 PC for the first time, I realized Microsoft is now copying Linux, not the other way around. Just last week I looked at the new MAC OS and I wanted to scream that they were ripping off the XFCE GUI in Linux. Linux is leading the way in Netbooks now and embedded devices are now a focus. If you have ever flashed a router with Tomato, or one of the other Linux router OS's, you know what amazing things routers are now capable of. And then we have smart phones and make no mistake, Android is just Linux in a smart phone. We don't have to deal with a proprietary systems from MS or Apple, where you only get what they hand out to you. This is Burger King baby, you get it your way. Google may be the name on this open source OS, but it belongs to us all. Google can not take this OS proprietary. Yet any time we, the people, wish we can spin off another branch of development with those things we want. OS's like Meego (and I'm sure there will be others) should be able to be ported over, if we wish, in the near future. We may be looking at an era where we can truly buy the smart phone of our choice, install our OS of choice and choose our carrier of choice with ease.
Bottomline here is you can help. If you are not a dev, or a programmer, you can still contribute to this by continuing to use these builds, and report bugs, and you can contribute money to any of the open source efforts, particularly in areas where you want to see more effort. You don't have to sit on the side lines anymore and just whine about how you are getting the short end of the stick by the big corporations. Open Source belongs to us all, take ownership.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
EsotericPunk said:
This is one of the best posts I have read on this forum. What a great insight into the evolution of the smartphone, it damn near brought a tear to my eye and sure as hell made me proud to be an owner and defender of the ideal of Open Source. Sure, my Captivate isn't perfect, but I continue to try new ROM's and use my technical proficiency to try and reason out any bugs so as to provide useful feedback. In turn, these ROM's continue to get better and everyone profits.
I love you guys... *group hug*
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well said Androiders!
+10
Then go wait on the sidelines for a cyanogen port. We, galaxy s phone owners. Don't and won't need huge steps beyond what we have. Your expectations are limited to what your old phone needed to perform.
You are right its silly. And unnecessary. Find a new hobby if porting roms isn't doing it for you.
vbhines said:
First, let me say up front that I have the utmost respect for the developers in the Captivate forum. It's a handicapped device that has much more potential than I think we'll ever be able to tap, simply because there isn't much motivation for Samsung to fix its biggest issues. Let's face it: The things we like most about our favorite Android handsets are precisely the things that make them seem "too complex" to the non non-technical general public. I think that the Galaxy S line has been a huge dissapointment to enthusiasts, and a big "ooh, ahh" for the iPhone-types.
That being said, let me move on to my main gripe: Through my Droid Incredible, I fell in love with flashing ROMs. If it had a higher build number, I flashed it. And you know why? Because it was better a better build. Newer baseband versions fixed more problems than it caused. I could flash ROMs on a train versus needing to be at my desktop for an exhaustive multi-step shamble. And when ROMs were released from build to build, developers in general knew what to expect as far as results.
I simply can't say that that's true with the Captivate. I'm growing increasingly frustrated with this phone and it's idiocy. I hate having ROMs with "Beta 9.3.5" after their title. I hate that half of the releases are to take out some Samsung crap, replace it with some AOSP-like goodness, just to see what sticks.
Again, it's not a condemnation of the Devs. They have made this phone tolerable, which is no small task. I just think it's a sad state of affairs when an OS based on an open source foundation has been so brutally slapped together that it makes a phone with the looks and hardware specs of a Ferrari about as much fun to own and maintain as a Yugo.
Who's with me on this one?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
When I bought my first Infuse back in July i was pretty excited to learn how to use it and get into developing for Android. It was my first Android phone so I didn't know enough to know that I was buying Samsung's red headed step child. Since then I've been working on learning the various ins and outs of the phone. I've read all the posts in the Infuse forums, and looked through the githubs of the various amazing dev's who have worked so hard to give us the awesome roms we have. I feel pretty comfortable with the phone, and I'm still excited to take things to the next level.
Yet I can't help but feel discouraged. I have very few doubts about my ability to get ICS working on the Infuse, but I'm getting pretty tired of seeing nothing but naysaying from the last wave of experienced dev's. Obviously there are going to be hurdles, but how about offering encouragement to those of us who haven't given up yet? Isn't XDA about making the impossible happen? I have other phones I could focus on. I bought a Nexus 4G so I could learn how ICS AOSP is supposed to work and look before I bothered trying to blindly get it running on the Infuse. It is a ton of fun developing for that phone and I've already been able to do some pretty nifty things. I bought an sgs2 so that I could have a phone that had current dev work being done on it. I bought a rezound so that I could have a good solid daily driver (man I love that phone). In spite of all that, it is the Infuse that I want to do dev work for because it was my first love, and because it will be a fun challenge.
I just don't know if it is worth the effort any more. Are there enough positive people still left here that I would want to care about? I'm going to work on the phone regardless, but as it stands now, I don't see anything to gain from continuing to grow to be a part of this community.
I keep reading that things can't be done because we don't have the right drivers, or the right sources, or bad sources or etc etc. Is it true that it can't be done at all? Or is it true that it can't be done because no one wants to (or can) put in the amount of time that it will take to get things working?
Meh, you cant get something down with out the right equipment, the equipment being the codes, drivers, and sources. it could be possibly done, but you got to understand that the people who dev for this phone, got lives too. they cant just be stuck to a computer trying to get something to work.
Put it like this... we have an amazing hardware... we have software ready to be used... but we don't have the interfacing unit with us... and this is what is holding back the devs
If it is just a matter of time then great. Obviously it takes time to write the right drivers/driver wrappers etc etc. That just isn't the tone of most of the posts. "It can't be done" tends to be what it is said.
jefffeely said:
If it is just a matter of time then great. Obviously it takes time to write the right drivers/driver wrappers etc etc. That just isn't the tone of most of the posts. "It can't be done" tends to be what it is said.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Drivers can't be written without documentation.
That's the problem - there are a lot of proprietary binary blobs required to support various hardware, for which there is no documentation. Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort.
See Bluetooth on CM7 as an example.
Entropy512 said:
Drivers can't be written without documentation.
That's the problem - there are a lot of proprietary binary blobs required to support various hardware, for which there is no documentation. Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort.
See Bluetooth on CM7 as an example.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with this. But given that we already have CM7, shouldn't we be able to look at that code and use it to translate to the changes in ICS? I'm not being able to describe very well what I'm thinking. Something like using the CM7 code as a HAL?
its a crapshoot maybe it will work out like cm7. maybe it wont. I wish you luck. Im simply not a programmer. if I was I'd offer help. it depends a lot on what can and can't be used or adapted from gingerbread.
Entropy512 said:
... Reverse engineering these would be hundreds of hours of effort....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you're saying there's a chance. --Lloyd Christmas.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App
I'm trying to get Samsung to release the source for their ar6000.ko ethernet kernel module as well as the source they used for wpa_supplicant (which contains extensions to wpa_supplicant.) To that end, I've sent them a few messages making those requests. Here was their reply (edited)
1. about 'ar6000.ko'
: source code of atheros chip set is not GPL.
We get BSD/GPL dual license from Atheros company.
We choose BSD license, so we do not have any obligation to publish source codeof it.
2. wpa_supplicant
Wpa_supplicant is also BSD/GPL dual license. (and we also choose BSD license)
________________________________________________________________
WPA Supplicant
==============
Copyright (c) 2003-2008, Jouni Malinen and contributors
All Rights Reserved.
This program is dual-licensed under both the GPL version 2 and BSD
license. Either license may be used at your option.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sadly, they seem to have failed to meet the conditions of the BSD licensing as well. I've sent them another message stating this:
Concerning the atheros AR6000 driver and the wpa_supplicant binary. In denying the making available source for both the ar6000 module and the wpa_supplicant binary, you state that you get both of these with dual GPL/BSD licensing and choose the BSD license. That is fine, however you failed to meet the terms of the BSD license. In particular, for both items, the BSD license states: " Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution." You have failed to state your licensing terms and this disclaimer in reference to the above stated items in either the printed documentation or the legal licensing screen embedded within the settings app on the device. As a matter of fact, you've failed to provide any licensing notice for GPL or BSD licensing for either item.
Regardless, I'm asking for these items in order to attempt to FIX BUGS that have been left in the device. It's been well documented in the forums for users of these devices that the wifi chipset drivers are causing crashes, freezes, "sleep of death" situations, etc. Samsung's support has been EXTREMELY unresponsive in attempting to resolve these issue, and I'd be willing to bet that reports of these issue aren't even getting through to your development teams.
Therefore, I once again ask that you release the source for the ar6000 module and wpa_supplicant binary that you have NOT followed the licensing terms of (regardless of which license you've chosen.) Oh, and there's no licensing string embedded in the ar6000.ko module either. modinfo ar6000.ko reveals nothing (for the ar6000.ko module on the GT-P6210 with KL1 firmware.)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Honestly, I don't expect for Samsung to be responsive and/or helpful. I think the best that anyone can expect is that they release an updated firmware that includes the proper licensing information.
Gary
Check and mate Sir. I despise these OEMs. You GO gary. Whatever happened to opensource? What are they so afraid of?
Anything we can do to help, let us know. Even if it means just spamming their inbox.
It's not like I buy the tablet because it has such an epic driver....
I buy it for the hardware...
When your entire OS is practically open source... not open sourcing the drivers for the wireless chip seems like shooting yourself in the foot just because you can.
Thanks garyd9 for fighting the good fight.
When companies do stuff like this for critical things, it _really_ makes me want to spend my money elsewhere.
In regards to the SOD issue, I've noticed that quite a few honeycomb tablets have this issue or something similar to it. I've only personally seen it with Samsung branded ones (10.1 and 7.0+), but have heard similar issues with asus and and acer.
Perhaps its a honeycomb issue?
Gary
give em hell!
If you'd like to help, please click the link near the top of the OP to submit the article to the XDA portal. Perhaps if this issue is shown on the front page, and enough people notice, Samsung could be convinced to "choose" GPL over BSD.
Thank you
Gary
Did you get any useful /proc/last_kmsg dumps of SoDs? Enabling wifi may only be making a difference because of the wakeups.
That said - I am completely shocked that Broadcom's drivers are open source and the ar6000 driver isn't. I've lost a lot of respect for Atheros AND for Samsung over this. I can understand if it's BSD - but seriously, what trade secrets could Samsung have in a freaking Atheros driver, and for something like this, what possible business reason could they have for witholding source for that ONE module? It's freaking stupid.
I was hoping that they'd start becoming more developer-friendly as a result of hiring Cyanogen, but they're being asshats at this point. They donated a device to Codeworkx (or someone else on Teamhacksung) to get CM7 ported, but have not given him a shred of assistance with the porting effort. Basically, trying to get "Supported by CyanogenMod" credits without ANY significant effort.
As much as I hate Sony - SE seems to be doing the best of any manufacturer in terms of supporting people doing platform-level development.
Edits:
You know, this is proving to be a clear and recurring pattern. I have never seen XDA get anything useful out of SamsungJohn for example, all he does is come over, tease us with something, and never follow up.
Over in the Captivate forums - he came in and posted that source code was out, then left without any followup - by the time he made this announcement, people had already found the source and were working with it - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=997098
He then came and teased us with the Samsung Developer Program - guess what, it provides NOTHING for developers doing platform work - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1392847 - John also didn't come and respond to any of the feedback
Prior to that there was the Samsung Developers Conference tease - http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1291758 - nothing useful came out of this for anyone doing platform work. In fact, John just dropped off the face of the earth, I'm assuming that not a single person from XDA actually was brought by Samsung to the event, otherwise there would've been a followup/debrief post. Anyway, the "big announcement" was just the Galaxy Nexus release announcement. Big deal - that's a dev phone because Google forces it to be one, it's more of a Google product than a Samsung one.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=954896 (and many similar posts) - He just crossposted to a ton of forums saying something awesome was coming. Something awesome never came. The linked thread from many of his posts doesn't even exist. Actually, most of his 67 posts are just crossposting this tease - NOTHING ever came out of it.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/08/samsung-shows-affection-to-cyanogenmod-gives-its-devs-a-free-ga/ - As a PR stunt, Samsung threw a Galaxy S II over the wall to one of the CM developers. Without a doubt, Dan Hillenbrand (codeworkx) and Atin Malvaya (atinm) have not received any support from Samsung since Sammy threw a device over to them. The GSII is likely to be codeworkx's last Samsung device, he has become so frustrated with Samsung (Check his posts in the CM9 thread for I9100). Compare this to Sony Ericsson's effort here - http://blogs.sonyericsson.com/wp/2011/09/28/sony-ericsson-supports-independent-developers/ - They have given FreeXperia MASSIVE amounts of support, and it shows - http://www.cyanogenmod.com/blog/sony-ericsson-xperia-support
imnuts07 asked for some help regarding Droid Charge kernel source issues - https://twitter.com/#!/SamsungJohn/status/152835654303236097 - All he responded with was "how can we help" - no further response, imnuts07 didn't get anywhere until jt1134 gave him some pointers. (It turned out to be more proprietary module vermagic bull****...)
After all this, it's clear that with regards to platform developers, Samsung's intent is to do the bare minimum to meet their legal obligations with the GPL and no more. Even source code which they COULD release and have no valid reason for withholding is withheld if they are able to (such as the ar6000 module source code). I thought that the Galaxy S II was a step forward towards devices with 100% open source kernels, however it is clear that the GSII was just a fluke. I'm getting sick and tired of dealing with module vermagic headaches. I've spent at this point a few hundred hours of my spare time working on improvements to various products of theirs(maintaining kernels for three different products - Samsung Infuse, AT&T Galaxy S II, and Galaxy Player 5.0), and their consistent message back has been "go away, screw you, stop bothering us".
There may be a small bit of hope - I've been contacted by someone at samsung (perhaps due to your rant combined with my constant pestering on their open source website.) It isn't much, but the first line of collaborating is communication. They seem more interested in fixing the bugs than sharing code, but I'll take what I can get.
Oh, and the last_ksmg memory was corrupted when the one person who had adb, my kernel and root installed was able to check it. (As you know, the file won't be generated if header area for the ram console can't be found or is in bad shape.)
We'll see what happens, but I'm not going to hold my breath with the lunar new year coming up.
Take care
Gary
so how many people do we need to sue??
chrisrotolo said:
so how many people do we need to sue??
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No lawsuits required. Although... that might explain the poor customer support from Samsung. Perhaps they've been afraid that Apple will sue them for patent infringement if they help a customer?
Not that I've ever had any GOOD support from Apple... mostly just clueless kids taking guesses. Even their so-called "geniuses" are mostly clueless.
In typing that, I realized that I'm probably one of the hardest people in the world to provide technical support to. When I have a question, it's only after I've exhausted the combined knowledge of myself and whatever google can provide... meaning the only good response from phone support would be "Would you like to cross-ship an exchange or wait for the repair?"
can we spook them with a (legal)letter they are in violation of the GPL/BSD agreement, and If it isnt provided in X amount of time, we will be forced to escalate?
I like to annoy people to (;
Speaking from personal experience ,when dealing (even on corporate high level) with Samsung there is nothing to gain but some weight due to stress.
They do care( up to a degree) about some customer relations and I've seen very nice, honest and helpful people there. But this is where it all ends.
The farther you go the worse it gets. Somehow they got this Apple attitude of profit and secrecy all over their structure. Apple calls themselves "innovators" to reason the secrecy, but Sammy are nowhere near. If I was to say they do act like copycat killers I risk getting called names- though they "adapt" almost everything, from design to business models. The Korean HQ has drawn quite strict regulations for the rest of the world.
We should remember that Samsung is a HUGE corporation. Android devices D&R is a tiny faction, ruled like in Middle Ages. They have the road map and they ever raise the stake every time. From my point of view, I sincerely understand those people for not jumping out with the source code. If you get paid 100k+, you don't help anyone but yourself. The decisions are not theirs. The people taking decisions don't give a rat's a55 about GNU or Linux, Minux or whatever. On top of that, there are some people that MIGHT have some influence in changing this policy ( the brown bearded, we call them) but those are the pride ridden SOBs.
You can read this from their mobile device history. They had to go into that, given the fact they build everything, from ships to home furniture. They got a share of the market because they were big and had some bright minds there. I know for a fact that, at the beginning, working @ cell phone dept was like sentenced to prison, only the undesirable but indispensable were sent there. Huh, those people left, some for Apple and some for others ( LG,Sony and Hyundai). Panasonic and Toshiba flops are some examples of how, in a degree, cultural burdens lead to a fail. HTC, a mobile phone company, depends on how much stir dev's can produce. On the other hand, Samsung can get a write-off for their mobile dept. without a blink. Bada is a perfect example. It was close to write off so they decided to make it open- see HP. They are too big to follow rules and beside being big, they hold the power few have- the power TO BEND rules, that is.
Getting any serious, development like help from Samsung is close to what ''Acts of God" are described in car insurance.
htc9420 said:
HTC, a mobile phone company, depends on how much stir dev's can produce.
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You are, obviously, an HTC fan or employee. Well, I have a samsung tablet, so I'm developing on a samsung tablet. At least the device was unlocked when I bought it and I didn't have to petition on facebook/twitter/etc just to be able to root it.
Unless you have something to contribute to solving a problem, please go elsewhere.
garyd9 said:
You are, obviously, an HTC fan or employee. Well, I have a samsung tablet, so I'm developing on a samsung tablet. At least the device was unlocked when I bought it and I didn't have to petition on facebook/twitter/etc just to be able to root it.
Unless you have something to contribute to solving a problem, please go elsewhere.
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I wouldn't be so quick to judge him...
I just got the impression that the point of the post was to promote HTC while bashing everyone else.
Perhaps I spoke (typed) too soon. If so, I apologize.
No, the HTC thing was just one line, and what I perceived as some general comments on why some manufacturers (Panasonic, Toshiba) seem to have kind of flopped in the market.
There was definitive Samsung-bashing - but he's just joining with us in frustration.
Check PMs gary.
garyd9 said:
I'm trying to get Samsung to release the source for their ar6000.ko ethernet kernel module as well as the source they used for wpa_supplicant (which contains extensions to wpa_supplicant.) To that end, I've sent them a few messages making those requests. Here was their reply (edited)
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Hey Gary,
I'm the developer for a CyanogenMod port for the Samsung phone (GT-I5500). Samsung have released their source for an older version of the AR6kSDK, which I have put on github here: https://github.com/psyke83/AR6kSDK.3.0. This source is quite old, and doesn't support combo scanning, but it's newer than the ath6kl source release contained in the 2.6.35 kernel.
Last night I scoured the internet trying to find some newer source, and came across a release by Sony for one of their e-book reader products. I have uploaded the source onto github which you can check here: https://github.com/psyke83/AR6kSDK.3.1
The above git's description links to the location of the original source tarball on Sony's server, but if you prefer, just clone the git and checkout the first commit, as it's the unmodified source.
I have made some changes already to get the module to initialize properly, but at present it's not even scanning properly. Perhaps it will work better for you without modifications, especially if your device is not AR6003_REV2 (which is the revision on my phone).
chrisrotolo said:
can we spook them with a (legal)letter they are in violation of the GPL/BSD agreement, and If it isnt provided in X amount of time, we will be forced to escalate?
I like to annoy people to (;
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
my friend mat has done this for me as he knows his stuff. it was a very powerful letter i must say haha. just waiting for a response
gary, thanks for all your efforts man! this is my first samsung android device, have they always been this bad in witholding source?