Psion Netbook Pro Port?

The RISC OS source tree is split according to licence for this very reason. There are at least three (possibly more) subdirectories at the top level, for GPL, BSD and Castle shared-source licences.

Don’t worry, I’m sure at least 90% of the code in the OMAP port was copy-pasted from Linux by now. ;-)

This is important, as it means RISC OS will inherit a ‘clean’ system but with framebuffer already initialised!

Excellent!

Is there a way that these sources can be used to make a version of RISC OS for the NB Pro? If so, how should this be done to avoid cross-contaminating the licenses between Linux and RISC OS? Would it be enough to keep the keyboard and power management code in a seperate file, with the RISC OS keyboard / power management files calling routines in the Linux-derived files?

Simply having the code in seperate files won’t be enough. One of the main features of the GPL is that any code which you link with GPL code must itself be released under a GPL compatible license. And as you’ve already guessed, the Castle license isn’t GPL compatible.

One idea which was raised on the forums a while ago was to place all the GPL code in an “extension ROM” – i.e. a second binary which isn’t linked with the main ROM image. If your bootloader supports loading an initrd/initramfs for Linux, then the extension ROM could be loaded in an identical manner, and the bootloader could use the same method to tell the OS where the file has been loaded to in memory.

...Wow. What a workaround, just to obey a licence to the letter.

I see now how Lord Ashcroft got away with it!

(Don’t get me wrong, I see there isn’t a (legal) alternative. But really… wow.)

Mmmm… I might get someone who knows C++ to inspect the Netbook Linux sources for the keyboard driver, and describe the interface to me in a high level way (the keyboard is linked to the PCon, so….. I think reading the keyboard would just be calling the PCon in some way. I suppose keyboard interrupts might be an issue; this is probably where the PCon code itself is important (and where RISC OS will need to regularly poll to see if the PCon is trying to send a message to the PXA255).

Would anyone here be able to do the following at some stage? (not just yet, but when I start working on getting RISC OS booting?)

(one] Describe the Netbook Pro keyboard driver in a high-level way (I could email my current understanding of the PCon to you, so you know what I already know, which will make this easier)

[two} Describe the PCon I2C driver in a high-level way

Sound, touchscreen, and everything else, can always come later :)

note to forum admin… if I put (1) (2) above, the long sentence completely messes up the formatting. If I break the sentence for (1) into two pieces, then the software gets very confused, and puts (2) above (1), with (1) inside a grey box, and (2) above it, as part of the previous paragraph :S

Would anyone here be able to do the following at some stage? (not just yet, but when I start working on getting RISC OS booting?)

If you don’t get any other offers then I’m willing to give it a go.