zlacker

>>fghtr+(OP)
Naive question, but with a commercial product like the i.MX8M from NXP Semiconductors, is there really not enough in it for them to develop Linux support for their product, rather than leaving it to other parties? Presumably some OS supported things like the i.MX8M’s accelerometer from the launch date, or are these chips shipped to OEMs on the basis that the low level functions work, but all OS support has to be created by someone else?

>>gorgoi+u3
From what I understand they would give you a bunch of binary blobs or either have a fork of the Linux kernel with a lot of patches to get the device working.

So they may support a single old version because the effort of upstreaming the support would be expensive.

The blog post says that the Librem paid 15 developers full time for 2 years on the project.

That's a huge expense and most of all the customers of the SoC won't be demanding upstream support.

Of course also what happens is that you get into a rabbit hole of patching your fork until it becomes a huge task to reintegrate.