an idea - community (XDA) certified devices

an idea - community (XDA) certified devices - Android General

I hope this post does not get too long and you bear with me...
This idea came to me recently - thinking about ICS and what the vendors are calling "legacy" devices. I even started a thread at qualcomm developer forum, asking them nicely to give us the needed binaries, or even better source code for the user space drivers. I really doubt that it will happen, but it does not cost much to try.
Anyway - here is the idea - instead of begging the vendors to release the source (or binaries, or unlock the bootloaders) lets give them an incentive to do so by introducing community (XDA) certified devices. We could come up with lets say 3 levels of community compliance for the devices - with grades:
A - the vendor has made it possible to unlock the bootloader of the device
A+ - the vendor has made binaries needed for compiling AOSP, Cyanogenmod and other open source projects for the device available and made the bootloader unlock-able
A++ - the vendor has released source code and binary drivers for all of the hardware components of the device, and made the bootloader unlock-able
A committee of recognized developers and community members (I am thinking guys like tytung, texasice, azrienoch, etc... - do not feel left out guys) - would receive sample devices from the manufacturers to test and certify the level of community compliance.
A special section of the XDA site would be set up showcasing the community certified devices, and ad space on the portal would be dedicated to showcase latest devices to recieve certification.
Heck, the community could even make money - by allowing (selling the right to) the vendor of the certified device to put an XDA certified device on the packaging or on the device itself (the money could be used to help support the website costs or fund development projects - bounties and such...)
It may sound like a lot work, but this way we could allow the community friendly vendors to get a chance to show their devices, and smaller vendors trying to ways to differentiate themselves could find a fast-track to the hearts of enthusiasts. The community members looking for a new device would make their minds easily by browsing the certified devices section.
I know I would participate in a program like this (Samsung if you are reading this I am willing to certify the N7000 right now - please PM me so I can send you my address)

It's a cool idea, but I think it's a tough sell to device makers.

If we get the community on-board, the vendors will come by themselves.
If the community showcases these devices, and the community members buy devices based on these grades - the vendors will want to come on board.
The vendors like Xiaomi and Meizu could be the first to be interested in this type of publicity - and this is really the type of vendors we should try to get interested.
Once the smaller ones are in, the bigger ones are sure to follow
But community awareness is the first step - we need to choose for ourselves and recommend to others devices that already fall into this category - like SE and HTC devices that are already bootloader unlock-able, and to not buy and not recommend devices like the locked-down Motorola's.

srle said:
If we get the community on-board, the vendors will come by themselves.
If the community showcases these devices, and the community members buy devices based on these grades - the vendors will want to come on board.
The vendors like Xiaomi and Meizu could be the first to be interested in this type of publicity - and this is really the type of vendors we should try to get interested.
Once the smaller ones are in, the bigger ones are sure to follow
But community awareness is the first step - we need to choose for ourselves and recommend to others devices that already fall into this category - like SE and HTC devices that are already bootloader unlock-able, and to not buy and not recommend devices like the locked-down Motorola's.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will be hard to do as each OEM will need to get all the source from other manufacturers and they will never release the source for their drivers. Not to mention alot of peoples choice on buying a device is the price from their carriers. The carriers won't jump on board as any Modding voids warrenty and they will refuse to support it. Not to mention their stand on how not everyone should have access to certain things. (Can't say I disagree with them). Then you mentioned the MIUI phone. They won't get far as alot of people are upset they stole most of the coding from CM and are now trying to make money off of it. Not cool. Don't get me wrong I would love to see an XDA approved phone. Just don't see the OEMs having any interest as there will not be as much money to be made and in the end that is all they care about. Besides once Samsung finishes buying MIUI then that will be a proprietary os. They already have CM. Notice the bot went down shortly afterwards? Odd? Just a little lol

I would not worry a lot about that - the Apache 2.0 licence allow reuse of code in closed source projects - it's a choice Google and OHA made.
Project and ROM makers will come and go - today it's Cyanogenmod, tomorrow it will be someone else with a different project (think WebOS on our Android devices). The point here is to have an option to buy a device that's free to be modified and free to support which ever OS the community decides to run on it (maybe some new version of Ubuntu even).
Phones are also only a part of this problem (and the part that's dependent on carriers) - there are also tablets and probably media players to consider here.
I think that this certification could help the vendors and even carriers which want to stand out and show that they are different by giving them means to do so. In the end, even subsidized devices are payed by you - and not the carrier, so you should have a choice to do what ever you want with it.

Related

Submitting Patches to the Repo / Forking

Hi all!
I'm an android developer, and I regularly read the official android-dev and android-porting lists, but on all the fan blogs and from lurking here, it seems that all the good development is coming from XDA-dev!
So why don't you guys do some patch submission? Features like auto-rotating browser and the transition animations should really, really be in the main source, but the official Android team have their thumbs up their asses in regards to UI/polished stuff.. (I bet they're too busy working on the lower level cellular stuff and the ARM-generating stuff like in the *flinger libraries).
So you guys should make some patch submissions over at (http://source.android.com/submit-patches)!
That way, the next RC will have all of these lovely features you guys have implemented.
((Or, alternately (but more ambitiously), fork the entire codebase. Strip out the DRM and add a framework for native code execution. Perhaps that's a pipe dream, though..))
Thoughts?

I think forking the Android source would be a very nice touch, if Google doesn't pull it together. We could still add on to stuff from the official code, but add on all the special stuff that Google refuses to (they've said they won't add the ability to change CPU speed, etc).

Oh, absolutely, there would be numerous advantages to having a fork. It should definitely be discussed! I'm afraid that Google may be trying to exert too much control on their platform in ways that we don't always want, so there is nothing legally to stop us from forking and maintain a more badass tree. GitHub could provide the hosting.
Of course, it might be a waste of effort. If you submit the badass patches, then the good features here go out into all the phones in the next versions. Work on the fork, and only the selected users who are able to flash their own phones can use it, unless some Chinese companies start using it or something like that.
Names?
XanDroid? I'd rather like to see Mandroid with in a slick black theme..

Well to me it seems like the only people doing cool things right now with android have rooted devices
So why cant you ***** a little on google lists to make them actually do some work. The Roadmap @ http://source.android.com/roadmap is a joke. Either they give us root or they start working imo. =)

Seanambers said:
Well to me it seems like the only people doing cool things right now with android have rooted devices
So why cant you ***** a little on google lists to make them actually do some work. The Roadmap @ http://source.android.com/roadmap is a joke. Either they give us root or they start working imo. =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you think that the release of the new unlocked Dev phones will change things?

Yeah it'll most probably shake things up a bit, however what about all those that already have a g1?
I for sure isnt buying a new phone to get root.

But even so, we're still talking about modifications to the OS and the packaged applications, which would be released in the next RC version, so even non-root users would get the features in the next update, along with anyone running Android on something besides a G1.

my .02
Id say submit some of the things found here and see what goog does with it, if they openly add these things that need root at this point and let xda dev participate in the OS with such submitions...then cool thats how open source works best, when anybody can add to the project, a phone OS utopia
If they ignore it then, a fork is the way to go but give google a chance to do the right thing first before, just leaving them in the xdadevs dust with a custom distro...

bhang said:
Id say submit some of the things found here and see what goog does with it, if they openly add these things that need root at this point and let xda dev participate in the OS with such submitions...then cool thats how open source works best, when anybody can add to the project, a phone OS utopia
If they ignore it then, a fork is the way to go but give google a chance to do the right thing first before, just leaving them in the xdadevs dust with a custom distro...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google has refused to add multiple features. They feel that they aren't necessary, or that your average consumer wouldn't want it (main thing I can think of atm is CPU speed).
If they don't add the features we request, simply because *they* don't like them, then a fork would get us exactly what we want/need. After we fork it, and the number of users using stock Android plummet, maybe they will listen .

I see a problem with forking... who says what is allowed and not allowed? That is the main problem. Now if you wanted to just add an app that would be one thing but there is not going to be an easy way to do this.

Gary13579 said:
Google has refused to add multiple features. They feel that they aren't necessary, or that your average consumer wouldn't want it (main thing I can think of atm is CPU speed).
If they don't add the features we request, simply because *they* don't like them, then a fork would get us exactly what we want/need. After we fork it, and the number of users using stock Android plummet, maybe they will listen .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Given the number of G1s with modified fw installed compared to the total number of sold units, I somehow doubt the number of users is going to plummet.
IMHO it would be a needless fork unless some new or considerably modified features were planned. Better to just patch the functionality into the official builds, if at all possible.

I'm not convinced by that logic. There would be an important difference between a fork and patched versions of the firmware, as a fork would have a totally different design philosophy. Whereas Android is focused on speed (or whatever the hell they're concentrating on..but to be honest, I think they're dicking about over there), Mandroid could have more focus on polished features and low-level access. ((And! No DRM, and I'd like to see some more security features..ZRTP?))
Either way, I think it's really important for the success of the open future of phones that the open source community take and give back. There's no need for the back-and-forth like with, say, PSP-cracking as we have the source code and we are allowed to do whatever we like with it. If we just keep patching what they give us and keeping the modifications closed, then we aren't really in control.
As for project management, I'm absolutely sure there are people who are capable of maintaining an active open-source project such as this, as long as there is a well-thought out design philosophy. I'd love to be involved, if enough people are willing to give it a shot. But, first, it'd be easier just to submit patches.

Miserlou! said:
PSP-cracking
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Click to collapse
PSP cracking is insanely different. If you were in that scene, does my name look familiar ? Was net admin at toc2rta/malloc, admin of psp-hacks.com, worked with a lot of people on a lot of stuff that I barely remember as it was years ago .
But for the PSP, we were working with a system we knew nothing about. So yes, Android would be a lot simpler to work with. But if Google doesn't listen to us, it's not like it would really matter.

neoobs said:
I see a problem with forking... who says what is allowed and not allowed? That is the main problem. Now if you wanted to just add an app that would be one thing but there is not going to be an easy way to do this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Android is licensed by both the Apache Software License (do whatever you want with it) and the General Public License (do whatever you want with it as long as you make the source code available for others). We are certainly allowed to do this, but the problem lies with the G1 owners running the official RC30. They wont have the rights required to flash the image which leaves them out of the party.

2 words
The community(did I spell that right?)
Bhang

Datruesurfer said:
Android is licensed by both the Apache Software License (do whatever you want with it) and the General Public License (do whatever you want with it as long as you make the source code available for others). We are certainly allowed to do this, but the problem lies with the G1 owners running the official RC30. They wont have the rights required to flash the image which leaves them out of the party.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I meant who is going to the be decision maker of what features will be added... The Community as a whole? What about some that want it but only 25% of the community wants it?

neoobs said:
I meant who is going to the be decision maker of what features will be added... The Community as a whole? What about some that want it but only 25% of the community wants it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what project leads are for. And hypothetically when enough people are dissatisfied with the xda-dev fork they will go and create their own fork. Except I don't think there is any real argument yet to go and create an xda-dev fork in the first place. Forking an operating system meaningfully is not a weekend project for a single person.

I have said it before, let's give them a bit more of a chance, a fork isn't something a guy can do in a weekend.
So let's see what happens in RC3X, the next release will give folks a bbetter idea of where their heads are at. If enough of the community is unhappy there will be a fork
Bhang

[Q] Need Your Input

ViewSonic is putting together a developers' site for all our Android products, and would love your input as to key items to include. Obviously we may not be able to include everything, but want to create something you'll find useful and valuable.
Please post your wishes here!
Thanks,
-Adam

1. HDMI out.....not through a dock
2. IPS or better screen
3. 1GB + Ram
4. 16GB + internal sdcard
5. USB ports
6. Mini and micro sdcard support
7. Released source
8. 3G/4G option
9. Optional ssd
10. GPS option
11. Bluetooth
12. WIFI of course
13. Support updating operating system for at least 2 years instead of "release and forget.....*cough* sam *cough* sung"
14. Leave the bootloader unlocked for the crazies like me that want to hack no matter the consequences. If I brick I'll eat it.
15. Keep up the good customer service you currently have
16. Quit making promises about flash when you don't have control over Adobe lol
OH yeah......Can I have my Honeycreams please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
EDIT: BTW....I am retired and would make a perfect person to test new products for you. Hint Hint

thebadfrog said:
1. HDMI out.....not through a dock
2. IPS or better screen
3. 1GB + Ram
4. 16GB + internal sdcard
5. USB ports
6. Mini and micro sdcard support
7. Released source
8. 3G/4G option
9. Optional ssd
10. GPS option
11. Bluetooth
12. WIFI of course
13. Support updating operating system for at least 2 years instead of "release and forget.....*cough* sam *cough* sung"
14. Leave the bootloader unlocked for the crazies like me that want to hack no matter the consequences. If I brick I'll eat it.
15. Keep up the good customer service you currently have
16. Quit making promises about flash when you don't have control over Adobe lol
OH yeah......Can I have my Honeycreams please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
I think that pretty much covers it, especially the part about honeycreams.
edit: it would be great if viewsonic devs put together a recovery package suited for the gtab since the only version of cwm that seems to work on this device is bekits modified version v.08

OfficialViewSonic said:
ViewSonic is putting together a developers' site for all our Android products, and would love your input as to key items to include.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It sounds like VS is asking for suggestions about what to include in the developer's site - that is, what information would be useful for developers creating apps to run on the GTablet and other VS Android tablets...as opposed to a wish list of features for the devices themselves.

Twitter feed answered by an engineer/development team member.
If you want to go hardcore.
Provide things like git hosting to selected xda developers.
Create some sort of cloud based compiling system and provide that to the developers as well.

Wait...you wanted suggestions for a web site. Look at this forum and add very strong mods to keep the clutter down. If your "official" site is not gonna allow the fun things we like to do to our tabs it probably won't gather much attention. However just keeping your online manuals and source files updated would be great. Allowing a private area for people to test UATs instead of them leaking into XDA would be kinda nice as well. I understand for legal reasons you couldn't have certain topics but it would be nice if just 1 provider of tabs would at least acknowledge the benefits of having the devs do their magic.
I was aware of what he wanted....just thought I would get my dream machine out there

It does seem like there could be a model out there for a vendor to create some sort of NDA protected developers program for early adoption.
Not releasing any files prior to official launch, but acknowledging that at launch those files will be stripped from another device. For example if company X has a legacy product Y1 and in the fall Y2 is coming out with a newer OS that could potentially be applied to Y1 then instead of waiting for Y2 to come out and people break their Y1's trying poor approaches to modification (and damaging your brand in thier eyes) you provide a group of developers lead time access without permission to release until say 3 months after Y2 comes out. This is double edged that it protects your competitive market strategy of Y2 while respecting the investment Y1 customers have made and recognizing the expectations of the users of the overall operating system you have choosen to utilize.

Had to read it twice but ^^^^^^^^^^^^what he said. There are several people here that would love this kind of opportunity. (This guy included)

Hi,
I'm not one of the devs here, but, from working w the Gtab, some of the things that would be useful would be:
- info on the BCT and partitions. There's some generic info around the web, but it seems like mostly reverse-engineered, read: guesses.
- source for bootloader and recovery (these may be proprietary, but maybe release under NDA?)
JMHO...
Jim

Adam
What would the company like to get out of starting such a project? That would dictate what should be included from a logical standpoint.
If only for research and testing then that would be something totally different especially for the folks here that know how to play with code? I would just guess if given the right information, tools and a place to share and explore the android system with support from your company , it would be taken to a level that the average user of mobile devices right now couldn't even imagine.
Android will in all likely become the system of choice surpassing the mighty Redmond and great apple.
I step back from my soapbox and blend back into lurking mode

Thanks,for responding to our calls and emails "for action and after purchase support." I bought from a retailer who was not allowing returns nor refunds, however, I did get a service plan. After working with it, I would not return it. Thanks to the incredible hardware and developer support from this site.
-Add direct movie streaming capability like from Netflix
-Easy beaming to other devices
-Easy tethering
-VPN
-Firewall or data encryption
-Public network privacy protection
-Standard auto attachment slot for GPS, music streaming, etc. making it interchangeable (I have an auto Navi/GPS (plus usb & bluetooth) about the size of this panel--thinking future forward--truly wishful thinking).
-Smart reader for scanning business cards, docs, etc. into it
-3G, 4G plus talk, fax modem capability
-Task Switcher or Manager
All I can think of now, will add more in case I forgot something.

Not a dev myself, but if this project was able to give us consumers some of my below suggestions, im sure many of us would be very happy and willing to continue to purchase VS products.
1) Real working market (I realise this is dependant on VS sorting things out with Google).
2) Required lib / drivers to use USB GPS and USB 3G.
3) For times when compatibility of software can be a task issue, the option to be able to dual boot to say WINCE. So basically WINCE support. This is for those like myself who cannot use our work related networks due to the limited proxy configurations support that Android currently has.

1: forum for known bugs list in current factory rom
2: forum for workarounds and non warranty breaking fixes for forrum #1
3: link to xda, with the caviot that using instructions from the sight could break warenty/brick/Bork the gtablet, for those who are fearless. (I have have purchased viewsonic monitors for my whole computing career, you could use an image boost. I love your brand so I think spending money reping android would bring a lot of life back to you. )
4:full software disclosure. At this point its all about power, ui, and price. You have the power and the price... recognize that 98% of your tab sails are to people who take your ui and toss it without a second thought. Not being mean, just honest.

USB
I would like to see is better support for USB drives. I would like to be able to use all my hard drives and thumb drives. Thumb drives work now but some times I plug them in and they are not recognized, forcing me to reboot.
For that matter move drivers for USB devices in general.

notsob2002 said:
Adam
What would the company like to get out of starting such a project? That would dictate what should be included from a logical standpoint.
If only for research and testing then that would be something totally different especially for the folks here that know how to play with code? I would just guess if given the right information, tools and a place to share and explore the android system with support from your company , it would be taken to a level that the average user of mobile devices right now couldn't even imagine.
Android will in all likely become the system of choice surpassing the mighty Redmond and great apple.
I step back from my soapbox and blend back into lurking mode
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We are looking to provide a centralized source for all the code/content/specs/details/etc you need for our Android-based products. But rather than guess what to put there for y'all, we'd prefer to ask! ;-)

OfficialViewSonic said:
We are looking to provide a centralized source for all the code/content/specs/details/etc you need for our Android-based products. But rather than guess what to put there for y'all, we'd prefer to ask! ;-)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's kind of funny that here you are asking for dev input and not a single one of our wonderful devs (you know who you are) have posted a response. I assume they are doing their communicating behind the scenes with you but that is purely a hunch on my part.
Anyway, I LOVE my gTab running VEGAn beta 5.1.1 but fully support your interest in helping our cookers so they can make your product as well as their product better.

sjmoreno said:
It's kind of funny that here you are asking for dev input and not a single one of our wonderful devs (you know who you are) have posted a response. I assume they are doing their communicating behind the scenes with you but that is purely a hunch on my part.
Anyway, I LOVE my gTab running VEGAn beta 5.1.1 but fully support your interest in helping our cookers so they can make your product as well as their product better.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree that the intent of the request was for what features would you like them to provide on their site, not in their products.
I think a forum, such as this, would be nice, especially if you can get the viewsonic developers to sign on to responding in a timely manner.
If you (viewsonic) are serious about reaching out to the developers, I think you have a great opportunity to make your system open and developer/modder friendly and become a leader in that category. could definitely be a great opportunity for you guys.
Oh, and perhaps a legal repository for .apks which are not available to us in the market for easy installation...

I assume VS goal is to sell tablets. You have developed a good hardware platform at a great price point. A few changes and you have a great platform. To sell more tablets you need slick firmware. The devs at XDA have accomplished that with minimal support. Full support would work wonders. Suggest ask the devs what they need, in what order and what detail. Might even give them access to your dev team. Website should have dev only section and a well updated what is going on section to elliminate the repetitive " are we there yet" questions.
If you are sincere in this offer, it should provide a great benefit to both VS and it' s users. Lookout ipad here we come.

All Android devices need work to play in the corporate environment. Security needs to beefed up, the ability to integrate with MS Exchange servers, work with proxy, vpn, and whatever other security stuff is comes out. IPV6 is a requirement too.

OfficialViewSonic said:
We are looking to provide a centralized source for all the code/content/specs/details/etc you need for our Android-based products. But rather than guess what to put there for y'all, we'd prefer to ask! ;-)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, go ahead and start the forum and post a link for us so we can start using with all the information that you have and can release and make adjustments as needed. You never know what will happen it may be more helpful to people than they may think and if nothing else it would be beneficial to people who just bought one of your products and don't understand the product and its capabilities.
Thanks for having the forethought to ask because most companies probably wouldn't even think of trying to get independent development for their product from outside of their sales or IT department! Thinking like that might actually make you the leader in a soon to be crowed market

Oepn Note to Viewsonic

I know that some members of the Viewsonic Dev team check in here on a regular basis. I would like to solicit your assistance in securing the needed files for the serious Devs on this site to port Honeycomb and future OS to the Gtablet. It is obvious from the recent Woot day that Viewsonic is benefiting from the hard work of a few Devs on this site. Some members even spent the day answering questions on Woot to promote the device. You have already invested in this product and with a little support for the Dev team on XDA you can reap additional rewards for that investment.

Certainly sounds good to me.

Couple of thoughts:
OfficialViewsonic has requested info for developing a dev site. It is likely they will make drivers/patches other things available and in a central location.
Not sure they even have/can get the source. They are not part of the OHA. Also, they are just reselling/rebranding this tablet. I don't think they are actually that involved in the software side of the development. Matala tablet. Tap-n-Tap software.
If they could/did get the source, I doubt they could give access to non-employee's. Since google isn't releasing the source directly, my guess is that any access to it, is guarded by NDA's etc.

They may not be invested in the way of making the parts but they are invested where it counts. Money and reputation. One of the deciding factors for me was viewsonics involvement, I know they re-brand but they stick by their products. I trust their brand and they know that their name has kept them in business. That said, I know that they want this product to succeed and will go out of their way make sure it does.
I don't think they will "gives us ours honeycreams" any time soon (or ever, as mentioned they are not a part of the OHA ) but open communication with devs about next step tnt updates is a start. I trust they are doing everything they can while securing their company's interests.

annoying samsung...

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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Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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?

Petition : LineageOS support for Nokia 8

Hello fellow TA-1004/TA-1012 users.
Nokia 8 has been a bittersweet experience for most of us. The insane price drop killing it's resale value. Stock but buggy and sub par software. It's a flagship that has ticked as many wrong boxes as it did right.
But the software experience leaves a lot to be desired.
http://chng.it/5X8ncWT6XB
Let's go ahead and sign this petition in numbers to get LineageOS official support for this device.
Please spread the word.

Eh? The issue is not at LineageOS, they would support it if there only was something to work with.
The issue is HMD Global unwilling to provide sufficient sources or provide any help for the community around their devices.
LineageOS can't just throw developers into puzzling proprietary blobs. They will just be shooting in the dark and will have a real hard time maintaining anything. You need a proper source code or clear device specifications to make anything usable..
Modding and puzzling around vendors firmware is totally another thing than actually maintain code.

Signed!

Database Info

welcome