So finally there is progress on this front that I am happy to make a
public update about.
HP supports the community and was kind enough to provide us with the
Android kernel source and some other GPL components that they modified
for the few Touchpads that were accidentally released running Android.
Now the source provided so far misses one component still, the wifi
driver. I did some digging around and it appears that the wifi driver
shipped with both webOS and with the Android are GPL, there are multiple
evidences of that including the driver licensing string.
Plus the
driver is linked against 10+ GPLONLy kernel symbols which makes it
kernel derivative. HP is still investigating this matter and we hope to
hear from them soon.
What's interesting about this kernel is it seems to be a totally
separate development from the webOS kernel (this was suspected from the
very beginning), but now the comments in the code seem to imply that HP
had another team working on Android port to Touchpad and that team
appears to be totally separate from the webOS team. I wonder if that
means there was a plan to ship the Touchpad with Android that were then
preempted by webOS plans after Palm purchase.
Latest change in the code is from March 2011.
From this code we have already found a way to enable the debug serial
console routed via audio jack.
Also it's interesting that audio ports are different and we are looking
into how this could potentially be leveraged.
BT is implemented in a more straightforward way and I hope to adopt this
into CM9 kernel as making more sense over what we have now.
Monday, March 5, 2012
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