Ars Technica article

[Niclas Zeising]

On 2020-04-14 01:22, Chris wrote:
> On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 14:40:35 -0700 Pete Wright pete at nomadlogic.org said
> 
>>  What direction change are you talking about?
>> > As alluded to earlier; the importation of so much Linux code. On one
>> > hand; yes it shortens the time-to-implementation. But in the broader
>> > scope; it's more work (and time) in the long term for it's removal,
>> > and replacement -- assuming that day ever arrives.
>>
>> this misses the key point that there is literally *zero* people being 
>> paid full-time to implement graphics drivers for FreeBSD, whereas at 
>> both Intel and AMD developers are being paid to develop drivers for 
>> the linux kernel.  They are also getting access to documentation and 
>> other resources on how these chips are implemented which I am not 
>> certain we have access to either.
> ??? why ???
> This has *always* been what's said in response to th(is|ese) topics.
> Look I'm not saying this to be a bitch/whiner/troll, and I already have
> enough bikesheds to last a lifetime, thank you. But why do we not have
> at *least* the documentation? Is this something I can purchase, and
> *donate* to the project? Is it so cost prohibitive? If so, can a pool
> be created to acquire the needed funds?


Documentation is far from enough.  You also need people to implement 
what is documented, and when it comes to graphics drivers, there is a 
lot of things to implement.  Even if you could produce the documents 
needed (which I doubt, things like that are usually under strict NDA and 
so on), it is not enough.  Both Intel and AMD have employed people 
working on these drivers, there is no way we can match this, and it is 
much better if we can spend our resources using their work, instead of 
reimplementing it.

Even the previous version of the drm driver (what's now called 
drm-legacy) was a port of the corresponding linux drivers, although 
instead of using lkpi (which didn't exist at the time), calls where 
changed to use FreeBSD kpis.  This took a huge effort, and a lot of 
time, and in the end, it was very hard to update.

>
>> There is nothing preventing others from standing up and implementing 
>> non-linux derived graphics drivers though!  I would just suggest 
>> taking a moment to understand how much of a lift this work is from a 
>> dev perspective, let alone support after bits land.  At the end of the 
>> day most people just assume graphics to work so they can get on with 
>> their real work they need to accomplish.
> I fully appreciate what you're saying here, and I couldn't be more grateful
> for any, and all the time, and dedication put into this project. I'm
> simply *dumbfounded* that everyone *else* can manage *native* support.
> But we *can't*. I'm *really* interested in discovering *why* so I can
> perhaps initiate *change*.

It's a simple question of resources.  We have 0 people working on this 
full time, or any paid time for that matter.  On Linux (and Windows) the 
drivers are implemented by employees of Intel and AMD.  As I said 
earlier, there is no way we can match this effort, so we should re-use 
as much of their effort as possible.

Regards
-- 
Niclas Zeising