Water Cooler > General OpenPOWER Discussion
News?
AdamJoseph:
--- Quote from: SiteAdmin on June 12, 2022, 02:08:21 pm ---including the potential existence of a third party agreement that would prohibit it.
--- End quote ---
I'm quite sure one exists, although less sure that it is the entire explanation for the situation.
One of the major concessions to get Hollywood to stop insisting on browser plugins (Flash and Silverlight) was the browser vendors agreeing to never allow their brands to be placed on a piece of software that didn't support EME, as a condition of receiving CDM licenses (widevine, etc). Unfortunately User-Agent has made brands and trademarks part of protocols, but that's another story....
Anyways, this licensing condition is the reason for weird situations like:
* Builds of Firefox that make no changes other than disabling EME being forced to use a different name.
* Firefox suddenly and silently flag ignoring the --disable-eme flag since September 8th, 2017 -- so the only way to truly disable EME is to patch the source code like Tor-Browser does. This gives Mozilla a toehold to claim that what you're compiling "isn't Firefox" and politely ask you to not use their trademark.
* (I speculate) Google dragging its feet on powerpc64le. Having to get Widevine working on powerpc64le and then maintain it is a burden for them, which is a factor in their decision.
You might have better traction asking the QT folks to integrate the patches into QTwebengine. They support widevine but don't distribute the binary themselves, which strongly implies that they are not allowed to do so. The only reason they wouldn't be allowed to do this is lack of a licensing agreement. If they don't have a licensing agreement then they aren't subject to the "everywhere or nowhere" requirement.
I fear that the effort to merge the Firefox powerpc64le JIT support will hit similar nontechnical roadblocks. I hope I'm wrong about that.
ClassicHasClass:
--- Quote ---I fear that the effort to merge the Firefox powerpc64le JIT support will hit similar nontechnical roadblocks.
--- End quote ---
I don't think so, insofar as I have unofficial OKs once I get it to a point I'm happy with it. I'm just not happy with it yet.
AdamJoseph:
--- Quote from: ClassicHasClass on June 13, 2022, 07:58:02 pm ---
--- Quote ---I fear that the effort to merge the Firefox powerpc64le JIT support will hit similar nontechnical roadblocks.
--- End quote ---
I don't think so, insofar as I have unofficial OKs once I get it to a point I'm happy with it.
--- End quote ---
Very glad to hear that!
Borley:
--- Quote from: SiteAdmin on June 12, 2022, 02:08:21 pm ---
--- Quote from: pocock on June 12, 2022, 06:47:45 am ---For example, do you see the IBM POWER9 chips continuing to be available in sufficient quantities for the Raptor ecosystem?
--- End quote ---
Yes, there are many, many years worth of the CPUs available.
--- End quote ---
And even if there weren't, aftermarket availability would persist. One can still find piledriver and bulldozer Opterons for socket G34 all these years later being sold out of recycling operations and private sellers. I know I've got IBM Sforza socket CPUs laying around unused right now, that could find their way to ebay in such an event. I think it's the fact that there is a specialized microcosm for both of the previous examples.
--- Quote from: SiteAdmin on June 12, 2022, 02:08:21 pm ---This wasn't directed so much to you as it was to the general developer community. We've seen some knee-jerk reactions when bad news comes out, including some people that basically just gave up and said "I'm doing x86 only, ME and vendor blobs are inevitable".
--- End quote ---
I've seen that defeatist mentality in all manner of other freed technology where it's always rationalized away as "you'll never be able to 100% avoid malicious functionality so you might as well use ____. It's what everyone else is using anyway". I believe this qualifies as nirvana fallacy. Then again, I can't call myself a developer. So I have no plans to stop using my RCS board(s) unless something better comes along.
--- Quote from: ClassicHasClass on June 13, 2022, 07:58:02 pm ---
--- Quote ---I fear that the effort to merge the Firefox powerpc64le JIT support will hit similar nontechnical roadblocks.
--- End quote ---
I don't think so, insofar as I have unofficial OKs once I get it to a point I'm happy with it. I'm just not happy with it yet.
--- End quote ---
I'm looking forward to the work getting mainlined :D
Hasturtium:
I discussed the state of my Raptor order last week and was told they’d received a shipment of Blackbirds and would resume shipping shortly. I was even told that they would be able to ship mine out within a week, though I haven’t gotten a shipment update or tracking number yet. I really hope that info was accurate.
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