FESM | Free Exynos Sources Movement

ThunderWolf78 said:

Ummm... I'm by no means a programmer(unless you count some obscure assembler one chip computer crap I did ages ago), but from what I gather the devs doesn't necessarily need source for anything, header files and/or docs for the problematic parts would suffice to understand how to communicate with them properly, correct?

And about this abusive language against Samsung in the media, please use proper respect, it will get you much farther than telling them to suck your **** and die.

Tapatalked from my GT-I9300 running high on CM10.

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That would've been enough to keep us from leaving, but now that we're on the way out, we're not coming back unless Samsung starts living up to the standards set by TI and Qualcomm as far as SoC source and documentation. If we have the option of working with a robust, well-documented platform, why would we waste our time with one that has substandard documentation?

E.Cadro said:

I've been following this thread and the only thing that is starting to come to mind is this

Albert Einstein

Sent from my Nocturnalized One XL using Forum Runner

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And that is why this whole mess started. We've been polite and have been using "official" channels for more than a year. Nothing happened. Just abuse and disrespect. This tactic change represents the last resort of a community responding to a number of developers saying, "I'm sick of this **** and going elsewhere."


BTW, I responded to Samsung's G+ post... (Actually, a comment on one of their posts) as follows:

me said:

+Samsung Mobile "We hear your requests about documentation for the Samsung Exynos processor and the relevant teams are looking into this. At Samsung Mobile, we value your opinions."

Pardon me if I'm highly skeptical.

In late February, numerous Galaxy S II family devices started bricking for unknown reasons. These devices were so badly damaged that not even JTAG could bring them back to life.

After months of NOTHING (not even a peep) from Samsung, the community finally got an answer of why these devices were bricking from a Google engineer that had worked with eMMC chips with the same firmware revision. These devices had defective eMMC chips that were not JEDEC compliant and would suffer permanent damage if certain erase commands were sent to the chip.

In early June, Samsung claimed to the community that they were "working diligently" on a fix to the bricks - http://www.xda-developers.com/android/samsung-diligently-working-towards-hardbrick-fix/

Later that month, Samsung provided a "solution" that was completely inferior to anything the community already had in place thanks to assistance from those outside of Samsung.

In early July, Samsung deployed build XXLQ5 to the GT-I9100, which added the trigger conditions for the bug. Despite a claim to be "working diligently" on a fix, Samsung did the opposite - they endangered a device that was previously safe from damage. (Prior I9100 releases were missing MMC_CAP_ERASE from their kernel, which prevented dangerous erase commands from being issued.)

In late July, I met with three Samsung engineers to discuss ways to repair damaged devices, how to prevent more devices from being damaged, and how to work with Samsung in the future to prevent situations like the eMMC disaster from reaching such a point again by opening up more channels of communication.

The end results:
1) A method for repairing devices was not provided. Samsung convinced me that it was simply too unreliable, and I went "up to bat" for Samsung and did what I could to defuse the community's disappointment.
2) Methods for improving communications such that Samsung and the community would not find themselves in another "no-win situation" like that described in 1) could be avoided in the future. Samsung's management crushed this idea - no new lines of communication were opened, and no new efforts to improve cooperation between Samsung and the development community were made.
3) Samsung proposed a fix to protect further devices from damage that WAS robust. They submitted the fix to LKML, but we all know that what goes into mainline Linux 3.6 is never going to make it into an affected device unless Samsung backports the fix. The fix then appeared in kernel source for the I9300, a device which does not have defective eMMC in the first place, and for which the "fix" has zero effect. Finally - Samsung released an update to the Sprint Epic 4G Touch (SPH-D710), which was COMPLETELY DEVOID of any fix for the situation in October. http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=32579727&postcount=820

Seriously - 4 months since Samsung's claim that they were "diligently working" on a fix, 3 months since meeting with community developers, and Samsung is still deploying updates to affected devices WITHOUT ANY FIX.

So pardon us if we are skeptical of your claims that you are "thinking about it" and "working on it". We know what this means - you are doing absolutely nothing and simply trying to get the storm to blow over by claiming you care, when it is quite clear that you don't. It is painfully clear to me that the late July meeting was nothing but a PR stunt to try and sweep the situation under the rug.

There are sayings in the United States: "Talk is cheap" and "Actions speak louder than words". So far, all the community has seen is cheap talk, and never any positive action.

Meanwhile, without even being asked, Qualcomm acts by providing robust platform reference source with complete commit history at CodeAurora. TI acts by providing robust platform reference source at Omapzoom. Sony acts by answering developer questions in a timely fashion, and open-sourcing things they are not obligated to such as their sensor HAL (DASH).

Meanwhile, Samsung acts by screwing over Tab 7 Plus and Tab 7.7 users with "wifi driver is dual license GPL/BSD. we choose BSD. SUCK IT COMMUNITY!". Samsung also acts by deploying updateds with dangerous bugs to devices previously unaffected by them (see my above comment regarding I9100 XXLQ5.)

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Theshawty said:

I don't know if this has been answered before, but is there a logical explanation as to why Samsung haven't yet given us anything of use? What purpose is there to hold on to it for themselves? I mean, many people here say that doing what we do in this thread will have no use, but doesn't this give Samsung bad PR or something like that?

Are all of the current articles being posted plain bullcrap?

Entropy512: You seem very experienced in this, so let me ask you this: Do you, at all, think this has the slightest chance of actually working?

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Well, believe it or not, I think Samsung is just totally out of touch with reality. I don't think anyone in management was aware of just how good of a reference CodeAurora and Omapzoom are, and what Sony has been doing to attract developers. We've tried to tell them in the past, but the fact that the firewall is a minefield of **** that will cause responses to just get dropped has pretty much blocked proper discussion. I kind of ranted at their contact that Samsung's ridiculous firewall policies WERE a part of the problem.

egzthunder1 said:

You see? This is a more sensible approach. Albeit the other devs have already told them, in person what they needed and why. At least, this is what Entropy has been saying up until now.

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That's the problem... What is happening here is the result of all other avenues failing. This is the "we have reached our limits of patience and have nothing to lose" point.

What does Samsung have to lose? Anyone who considered AOSP support or firmware quality/openness in their buying decisions, or received recommendations from those who did. There are a minimum of 130,000 confirmed installs of Cyanogenmod on Exynos4 devices. An increasing number of users are becoming aware of why their devices is CONSTANTLY behind others in terms of updates. Those users are power users who likely are sought out by their friends for recommendations.

atinm and I both pointed out to our contact that they should take a close look at HTC - While we have no way of proving causation, there is a clear correlation in time between their fall from grace with the developer community due to bootloader locking and their market share crashing.

What do we have to lose? Nothing. If Samsung doesn't play ball, we just go buy Nexus devices or Sonys. I do feel somewhat sorry for those who may have difficulty purchasing a new device... But it's not that hard to eBay their device and buy a GNex. I've put in too many hours of my own free time and lost too much sleep to continue on unless something significant changes. Fighting Exynos has drained my passion for development. The XDA guys wanted me to talk at the BABBQ about a recent project or future one that gets me excited... My talk is going to suck because I really haven't done anything innovative or exciting for months. Just fixing/working around stupid bugs I shouldn't have to deal with, and countless hours reverse engineering crap I'd have clean source code for if I were working with OMAP or Qualcomm.

This is what happens when a manufacturer neglects a community to the point where members of that community start breaking.

They released the 5250 development board and site together with a 800 page user's manual, something which we didn't have before for any SoC. I'll have to see what they uploaded on the Git as it's quite a lot.

Edit: from what I can see at first glance they have 4.1.1 Jellybean sources up there and apparently the newest stuff.

nodstuff said:

Leave this to people like jerdog, entropy512 and codeworkx, they have a lot more tact and maturity.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

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On that note,

Thread Closed.

Jack Barrett said:

I think Samsung should treat their customers as valuable because we are the ones who made their company known. I dont know why is this small piece of code such a big secret. Probably they think they found the best way to optimize it to be fastest and they dont want to share so other companies wont take advantage of the code. Selfish isnt it? Its about time and im sure we will see the sources soon if we keep spreading the world about it.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using xda app-developers app

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Err... lulwut?!? Please tell me you are not serious. What you are stating is the equivalent of wondering why Coca Cola does not share their recipe with the rest of the world. It is not a matter of it being a secret, it is intellectual property. They made and developed the SoC, why should they share documentation on how it is made, least of all with us? It isn't a matter of it being a selfish act, it is how the real world business' operate.

Zatta said:

We need to keep this one going, now more than ever. Seriously, keep posting this stuff everywhere we can!
I have the feeling that we are aiming on the right departement this time: PR, not directly to developement.

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No. PR will have to obey whatever decision comes down from Engineering, and Sales, and other branches of management, not the other way around.



Ok, you guys may or may not know who I am and what I do around here. Out of everything, one of my biggest things is to advocate for a more open atmosphere and general openness coming from device mfgs to us (the development community). We have had numerous "movements" hosted on xda including petitions, news articles, and more, which were all directed to companies asking them to open up their stuff to us, and normally I fully support those.

Having said that, and I know I will earn the hatred of a few people in here, I cannot support what you guys are doing in here. Bombarding communication channels of a company because you want something out of them? Might as well try to DDoS them and threaten them in the process. But I am getting ahead of myself... lets take a step back for a second here.

The OP on this thread titled this thread "Let's get some Exynos sources". Nothing wrong with that, perfectly good request. However, having looked through the entire 18 -19 pages that this thread has grown into, I see that what you guys are truly asking for has nothing to do with what you are explicitly asking to get. The documentation for the SoC is information that the likes of AdamOutler, Rebellos, E:V:A, Entropy and just a handful of other people could make some use out of. What you guys are asking for in here are:

* codecs
* libs
* API

and various other pieces of code that seldomly relate to the processor in any way, shape, or form (the graphic libs relate to the gpu, so there is a small connection there, but nothing of the caliber of the kind of documentation that you get with the information about the chips). These pieces of code are more or less related to ROM and kernel and, like someone pointed out earlier in this thread, are either proprietary or licensed under Apache, which does NOT force anyone to release any kind of source. GPL is the code that needs to have the source shared, not Apache. So, what you guys are doing here is wrong from the get go as you are not even sure of what you are asking for in the first place. If I was working with Samsung, the first (and likely ONLY) question I would ask whoever asks for this information would be

"Why do you need it? What are you intending to do with it? Can you give me specific examples of projects/improvements you would like to work on with this information?"

I can almost guarantee you that, aside from XplodWild (only name I have seen in this thread), likely not a single one of you could answer this question with a precise answer. Answers of the kind

"I want to make the phone better"
"I want to make the phone faster"
"I want to make the phone less laggy"
"I want to run CMx with a working cam and better sound"
"I want my SGS3 cam to make me an espresso while I take a picture"

and answers of that sort are ALL invalid and will take you absolutely nowhere. The kind of things you could use this information for would be to do things of the caliber that Adam does (Unbrickable Mod Resurrector, etc). Documentation about the SoC would allow you to communicate and interact with the chip via some sort of interface (UART, etc) as you would know stuff about the schematics of the damn thing. Unless you are into really heavy low level coding (ie making a kernel from scratch) or hardware hacking, you will not need this simply because you cannot use it.

The devs who have a need for this have already requested this without any success (like xplodewild has stated before). I know for a fact that Adam has done so as well and Entropy during the brick bug dilemma. Understand that Samsung is under NO obligation whatsoever to provide anyone with anything. To them, we represent a very small number (about 1% in total sales), which I believe are BS statistics tbh as there is no way to effectively determine this without literally asking people at the time of purchase if they are developers or not. Let alone the fact that we do have an effect on indirect sales (referrals, word of mouth, etc). I digress though... One of the posts that I quoted stated that without us, they would not be as big as they are right now. I am sorry but while that may hold true for the likes of HTC who ONLY manufacture mobile devices, when you have a company like Samsung, with a name THAT big... I am sorry to burst your bubble, but we did not make Samsung the company they are today.

Now, doing what you are doing is extremely unprofessional, and by hosting it/organizing it on xda, you are making the entire community (including those devs who actually need these docs) to look like a bunch of whiny kids who throw a tantrum because they don't get what they want. Hypothetically speaking, if I was working with Samsung and I had already dealt with requests for this from devs, and all of the sudden I saw a mass move like this, I would personally reconsider ever paying attention at all to the developer world mainly due to the high level of childishness and whining.

If you guys decide to go ahead with this, please do not use xda-developers as a home base because quite frankly, we do not condone this kind of behavior (bombarding comm channels and mass mailing a company to get something), regardless of motives. If you want to do it in a more polite and professional way, make a petition in change.org or something along those lines. This has worked wonders with Motorola and Asus in the past with the locked bootloaders (this is a different beast though). However, based on the responses I have seen already in this thread, I can almost guarantee you that this is not going anywhere as it is right now. Samsung never released docs for the Hummingbird or even earlier iterations of the Exynos... whatever makes you think that they will release the docs for their latest flagship (proprietary) chip is really beyond my understanding.

Again, sorry if this comes out harsh. I do want to see Samsung being more open (like all of you do), but this is certainly not the way to go about it.