Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2019 12:19:38 -0700 From: Johannes Lundberg <johalun@FreeBSD.org> To: Ian Lepore <ian@freebsd.org>, freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: raspberry pi 4 Message-ID: <2aabd4ed-67b8-0ea3-5616-fb4f1d418ba0@FreeBSD.org> In-Reply-To: <35ec822f78362b6b88e25f399fddcf501a327722.camel@freebsd.org> References: <20190709161243.GC4904@mon.zyxst.net> <HZPxf8oyosxDF2kVxJHXYBDY9ULZtF5VHU8FnEslTS9JS-dMsA1G61OnXEHmL0xUVPqZTeF2Q_Z9F58Su81uDDiX86do5d3mqFG7q4teJlw=@protonmail.com> <CAHxjC0-VJmQK=feqAb2H9sSAwHXo8=KTYr3Os72WBB58SaoiMg@mail.gmail.com> <20190710031750.GB28522@lonesome.com> <5fcba83d-2207-accc-ab33-a33085c80753@FreeBSD.org> <35ec822f78362b6b88e25f399fddcf501a327722.camel@freebsd.org>
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On 7/10/19 11:10 AM, Ian Lepore wrote: > On Wed, 2019-07-10 at 10:30 -0700, Johannes Lundberg wrote: >> On 7/9/19 8:17 PM, Mark Linimon wrote: >>> On Wed, Jul 10, 2019 at 09:52:43AM +0900, Denis Polygalov wrote: >>>> but please let's enhance support of the good OS (FreeBSD) >>>> on a *good* boards. >>> Despite any technical advantages or disadvantages, RPI has the most >>> mindshare, and we would be foolish to avoid it. >> Indeed. SBCs come and go. They are EOL before we even have a boot >> prompt. Personally I would like to see a joint effort focused on one >> board and make that work really well. Maybe an incentive would be the >> foundation throwing money at it in the form of rewards for well defined >> sub projects. The one most likely to survive longest is RPI but there >> might be other valid alternatives as well. Thanks to Emmanuel's efforts >> maybe Pine64 is a good alternative? I'm happy to help with graphics if >> we would do such focused effort but as long as we're all over the place >> I don't see much point in contributing with the limited time I have... >> >> Please note, this is not criticism in any way and I'm not trying to >> diminish the work developers do on these boards. Everyone is free to >> work on what they want. Question is, do we want a single board computer >> that's actually usable for something or only as tinker toys? Without >> direction, I'm afraid they will always be half working tinker toys due >> to the limited amount of developers we have. >> >> If anyone disagrees, I welcome your point of view. >> > What you call a "half working tinker toy" is what we use to build and > ship a dozen different products at $work. My apologies if I offended anyone. I didn't know that we had such good support that you could actually ship products based on it. Maybe I ask what board that is? > To you, working apparently > means graphics. I mean a board, that works out of the box with all features. Something that could also help to attract new users/consumers to FreeBSD. Students who work with RPI might choose FreeBSD if there was an OS image with all features working. We need to lower the barrier for new users and make FreeBSD more accessible (which is one thing I'm trying to do with my work to improve FreeBSD on laptops). This is one thing that could help with that. > To me, I couldn't be less interested in graphics and > it plays no part in a definition of "working". Developers are going to > work on what they find interesting, or what their employers pay them to > work on. Personally I don't care about graphics on SBCs that much either. I don't use them anymore (I used to, which is why I worked on porting Wayland). But I'm willing to contribute if it helps the overall well being of the community and FreeBSD. Besides what I mentioned above, for FreeBSD to be used in ICE, IVI and other embedded applications with GUI, graphics and touch input is very much a requirement for "working". No one is ever going to consider FreeBSD for graphical embedded applications if we don't even have one board fully supported... > > Trying to assemble a coalition of willing developers to focus on a > single board or family may be a worthy effort. Trying to make that > some sort of official policy is probably doomed to failure, unless it's > backed with salary-like money (not a few hundred dollars "reward", but > enough money to live on so that it motivates someone to spend more than > hobbyist idle time at it). Linux doesn't support so many boards > because it has so many more hobbyists at work. It supports them > because people get paid to write the code. Maybe you're right and maybe a pointless domed effort unless some big company pays a bunch of developers to do it. At least, I wanted bounce this idea around a little. > > -- Ian >
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