I would like to buy a fullly open source Single-board computer.
Members of a list about libre software told me that Raspberry isn’t fully open source :
We can see that in https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers :
The Raspberry Pi requires nonfree software to start up. It can’t reach _
the point of executing free software unless this nonfree program is part
_ of the installed system software.
_The startup program is, in fact, the same program that runs the GPU _
and the video decoding hardware. Thus, the GPU and the video decoding _
hardware are unusable in the free world, but these jobs can be done with
_ free software on the CPU.
_That program appears to implement intentional restrictions, such as _
_blocking the video decoding hardware for MPEG-2 and VC-1 in the absence _
_of a key that is specific to the machine in hand. This nonfree startup _
program affects both models of the Raspberry Pi.
On this page they don’t talk about Banana Pi.
Is Banana Pi fully open source ? The firmware also ?
I’m not sure to understand well this, but maybe this means that Banana Pi and Raspberry win can be more open source quickly :
Oh, and don’t forget that they’ve got an open-source GPU-driver now,
something that CHIPs are unlikely to ever have. (Yes, the open-source
driver is still a WIP, but it works surprisingly well from what I’ve
tested)
The A20 is quite good supported as long as you stay with the old Kernel 3.4 - unless you are a programmer, a GPU driver is not ready until the development ist finished, right?
You are very smart to get information before purchase - most do different.
If you want a Banana, there are only 3 models to recommend, well basically 2.
Banana Pi BPI-M1
Banana Pi BPI-M1+
Banana Pi BPI-M2U (careful, brandnew no SW available)
Basically you have to get the software from the armbian geeks www.armbian.com.
The Banana’s have not much time or know-how about SW, beside that they hardly fix a bug even if you put it on github.
