Another Pebble on the Open Driver Cairn

I've written elsewhere about the signs that things are finally moving on the open source drivers front. Here's one more pebble on the cairn:

VIA has released over 16,000 lines of code that provides a frame-buffer driver in the Linux kernel. This code is licensed under the GNU GPLv2 and appears to be crafted by VIA's Joseph Chan. Supported by this driver is VIA's Unichrome CLE266, K400, K800, PM800, CN700, CX700, K8M890, P4M890, P4M900, and VX800 IGPs. We're still pouring over the code, but it seems to be in pretty good shape and does support digital connections (and does seem to support HDMI already) -- in other words it appears to be further along then when the RadeonHD driver started out.

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Kudos go out to VIA Technologies this morning for this code dump, but the work isn't over. They still have a lot of work left to do to mend relations with the Unichrome and OpenChrome projects and focusing upon 3D and video playback work, etc. However, this is a step forward in showing that VIA may actually come around this time and play ball with the open-source community.

(Via James Tyrrell.)