> This is a false narrative, it's literally just not implemented.

It’s literally not, it’s what AMD’s maintainers have said themselves?

> HDMI 2.1 is not available on Linux due to the HDMI Forum. See: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=HDMI-Clo...

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/1417#note_83...

Like it literally does come down to the same thing as people say about nvidia: this is closed source and it’s not compatible with copyleft licensing. GPL can’t touch proprietary symbols any more than proprietary code can touch GPL symbols.

Nvidia can support it because they have a closed firmware and the symbols are buried in blobs. And that has its advantages too, like this situation!

If you can chase HDMI forum to open a minimal set of symbols, fine, and it sounds like AMD has been working on that. But there is a lot of closed IP in the audiovisual/graphics world that will simply never be opened and it’s unlikely that the closed driver will ever be opened up as a result (NVIDIA's open driver will be a rewrite without IP taint just as AMD did with their open driver). Graphics IP is just not a world compatible with copyleft and they’re ok with that, if copyleft suffers consequences oh well, Linux is probably <1% of their revenue base.

Copyleft is fundamentally about inventing a new, joyfully communist codebase, not gluing proprietary code onto community code. That’s why it’s GPL and not BSD - Nvidia’s license or hdmi forum’s license is not a problem on FreeBSD! And in this case you simply must invent your own 48gbps display standard, but with hookers and blackjack, and then drive sufficient adoption in the market, just as Linux had to do for software. Or someone already did that and it’s called DisplayPort.

But hdmi is proprietary license and you can’t use it unless and until they relicense to something GPL compatible. That’s the price of the Linux kernel, is it delivering some value here that BSD or minix wouldn’t for you?

Again though it is simply the reality of how things are in the audiovisual field, you will never get Dolby or Fraunhofer or Motion Picture Experts Group, etc to open up any of their proprietary IP so you will simply have to accept a feature deficit OR use a license other than GPL that tolerates linking with proprietary code. Like even Microsoft doesn't want to interact with MPEG/Dolby/Fraunhofer more than necessary (see: HEVC codec in the windows store rather than built in)

It is a testament to how thoroughly and utterly open-source (and specifically copyleft) has won that people are completely unable to contemplate the possibility that some code simply cannot and should not be released under viral copyleft licensing. And people can’t even consider the possibility of using kernels with other open licenses like BSD etc that are compatible with these types of proprietary encumbrances, just using another damn kernel is unthinkable today. Well, this is the price, this is what GPL was meant to do from the start - wall out proprietary code and build an ecosystem of forcibly permissive code! Maybe that's not entirely free of downsides.

Sucks that it came down on something the AMD fans care about this time, but the rest of us have been living with this world for a while now, and they've kinda been gleefully rubbing it in for years. Just rewrite your own display standard bro, but GPL, with hookers and blackjack. Not Linus's problem, maybe he's got a pithy thought-terminating-cliche for this one too? he's great with those - "fuck you nvidia", "zfs is just a meme anyway", etc. What a great guy!

The good news is AMD is supposedly working on getting HDMI to license the symbols at least, and that's supposed to drop pretty soon, but lmao at AMD fans crying over being on the other side of the GPL rugburn for even a short while, after constantly rubbing it in on ZFS and NVIDIA and everyone else. Like he’s not even relicensing symbols out from underneath you, this is nothing lol