[Tilt, TyTN II, MDA Vario III General] Draiko:
I have a bit of an update...

I was trying to find out the reason for this entire driver issue because it just isn't making sense... well, I think I've finally found it.

HTC can't develop the driver because Qualcomm wants money for licensing fees, right? Why is Qualcomm being so greedy? Well, it seems that they're trying to get money to pay for infringing on a few Broadcomm patents. A federal injunction

was issued in December of 2007.

Lemme summarize the important parts of the injunction here:

"...the injunction prohibits Qualcomm from making, using and selling certain chipsets and

software that infringe the three Broadcom patents."

and

" Qualcomm is prohibited, for example, from advertising, marketing or otherwise promoting; entering or fulfilling product orders; setting, determining or approving terms of sale;

providing customer service or technical support

; negotiating or entering into licensing, representative, reseller or distributor agreements;

developing, designing or manufacturing; writing, modifying or updating software; developing or modifying circuits; writing, modifying or updating hardware description code language

; or taping out or preparing documentation for, infringing products."

What is killing us here is infringed U.S. Patent No. 6,847,686:

Video encoding device including a video input processor, for receiving said video signal, a global controller, for controlling the global operation of the video encoding device, a motion estimation processor, a digital signal processor and a bit-stream processor, wherein the global controller stores encodes commands received from a host interface thereby programming the video input processor, the motion estimation processor, the digital signal processor and the bit-stream processor, the video input processor receives and stores the video signal in an external memory unit, the motion estimation processor retrieves the video signal from the memory unit, generates motion analysis of the video signal, stores the motion analysis in the memory unit and provides the motion analysis to the digital signal processor, the digital signal processor processes the video signal according to the motion analysis, thereby producing an encoding commands sequence and encoded data, the bit-stream processor produces an encoded video signal according to the encoding command sequence and the encoded data.

So, Qualcomm embedded and ATi Chip into a mobile device CPU. ATi and/or Qualcomm jacked Broadcomm's patented technology to do this. Qualcomm sold this stuff to HTC (possibly with foreknowledge of the patent infringement). Broadcomm sued Qualcomm and won. Qualcomm can't sell/distribute/support any of the infringing hardware after 5/29/2007 unless they pay Broadcomm. Since Qualcomm has to pay out to Broadcomm but doesn't want to lose more money than they have to, they want HTC to pony up.

My guess was that HTC planned to use some of the profit from the device sales to pay for the licenses for those drivers. Then they'd "update" the device drivers later on making customers happy and reducing initial costs. While they may have purchased the licenses for GPS/EVDO rev A prior to 5/29/2007, they probably dragged their asses with the video driver license. Now, Qualcomm can't even sell HTC the license without paying out to Broadcomm. HTC doesn't want to pay out, so they're going to wait for Qualcomm to revise the hardware so that it side-steps the Broadcomm patent (MSM7200A)... hence HTC's statement "Future products will support..." blah blah blah, you know the rest.

Meanwhile, Qualcomm can still sell the affected chipsets while only losing 6% of the profits (6% being the royalty fee to Broadcomm).

So, in essence, we're all suffering because Qualcomm decided to be a pack of thieves, Broadcomm decided to be a bunch of royal-douche-bags, and both Qualcom and HTC are too cheap to pony up to Broadcomm.

Unless someone from ATi or Qualcomm releases an open-source driver, someone codes a driver, someone just pays Broadcomm, or someone sues the CRAP out of the lot, we're never going to see a driver for the embedded Imageon in current devices.

If a driver is ever created and released by the user community, it would HAVE to be open source (or at least free) in order to avoid any legal action from Broadcomm since Broadcomm, ATi, and Qualcomm all suck butt.

The only legal courses of action would be:

1. Sue HTC under the computer lemon law. HTC will in turn sue Qualcomm for selling them stolen technology. Qualcomm will either eat the cost or sue AMD/ATi for partial fault.

2. Bypass HTC and sue Qualcomm directly. The computer lemon law has a sloppy grip when it comes to hardware manufacturers and, unfortunately for HTC, a class action suit against HTC would have a better chance of winning than one against Qualcomm due to the wording of the computer lemon laws.

I'm just a Software engineering Grad student here, but I'm pretty sure that this is the case given the information presented.

This all really sucks. I really can't decide if I should hate Broadcomm... I understand where they're coming from, but COME ON... don't kill of driver support! Seriously! Just stop Qualcomm from selling hardware or ask for 75% of the net profit from sales of the infringing hardware! Broadcomm is making this entire situation both tough and confusing!

I'm really hating them all right now and I kinda feel sorry for HTC.

I do have one question though... how come all of those tech news sites who reported on the htc class action push (I'm looking at YOU engadget, wmexperts, and gizmodo!) didn't dig this all up? It took me like 10 minutes to find all of this info and 20 minutes to type out the above! Wmexperts.com even did a friggin INSIDER INTERVIEW and didn't even MENTION any of this! Meanwhile, we're all sitting here scratching our heads and wondering how to get our friggin drivers! What kind of mickey-mouse crap are these news sites trying to pull here?!

sorry, just needed to go on a rant.