current status for the GEODE support on Linux and future plans

[Martin-Éric Racine]

Greetings,

Here's an update on the current status and on future plans of the
GEODE support in the Linux kernel and in X.org:

With the recent release of version 2.11.0 of the X.org driver for the
Geode GX2/LX, a whole cycle was wrapped up for many of the developers
involved:

* Jordan Crouse was among the unlucky ones who recently lost their job
at AMD. The same layoff also affected Coreboot developer Marc Jones
and many other Geode specialists.
* Several members of the OLPC project are also moving on, now that
most Linux kernel and X.org patches have been merged upstream.
* People like myself who were working in the thin client industry on
Geode-based hardware products are also moving on.

As such, remaining Geode-related bugs and our milestone for merging
back GX1/SC support into the GEODE X.org driver might never be taken
care of.

[1] http://wiki.x.org/wiki/AMDGeodeDriver

From this perspective, we welcome active participation of new
developers with access to a wide variety of Geode hardware
(GX1/SC/GX2/LX) to contribute and, eventually, take over upstream
maintenance of xf86-video-geode and Geode-related Linux kernel
drivers.

Meanwhile, Jordan, myself and several former OLPC developers still
have access to an XO-1 laptop each and, in my case, to several SC2000
and LX800-based products to test drivers.  However, given how none of
us work for a player in the Geode industry anymore, the incentive to
produce new code is obviously low.

Thus, it really is up to the community to contribute as much as it
can, in terms of patches to fix existing bugs and to merge back GX1/SC
support into the Geode X.org driver. For now, we expect these
contributions to take the form of unified diffs against the GIT
repository, sent to the appropriate mailing list (linux-geode on
bombadil for the Linux kernel; xorg-geode on freedesktop for X.org) as
Signed-Off attachments. Once we're satisfied with the quality of the
patches we receive, we might selectively grant commit rights to
selected developers to initiate the transition to new upstream
maintainers.

Best Regards,
Martin-Éric
Community Manager,
Geode X.org driver team