Qt with GLES on arm64 maintainer's decision - Was:: Upcoming Qt switch to OpenGL ES on arm64

[Dmitry Shachnev]

Hi Rohan!

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 04:24:43PM +0100, Rohan Garg wrote:
> [...]
>
> I concur here. It was correctly pointed out in another reply that by using
> OpenGL we're specifically catering to software that doesn't support
> GLES while making performance worse for mature applications that
> do implement both OpenGL and GLES. The reality of the situation is that
> the market currently favors GLES over GL on ARM SBC's, delivered with
> proprietary blobs. I think a more pragmatic view of this reality would be to
> deliver the best FOSS user experience that's possible with the proprietary
> drivers while the open source drivers are being improved. To that extent,
> by switching to GLES we improve the overall situation since OpenGL
> applications can fall back to software rendering via mesa on platforms
> where mesa does not support the GPU.

Here I agree with Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton’s opinion [1].

I think we should aim to provide the best possible experience with the free
software ecosystem. The experience with proprietary drivers should be the
second priority, if priority at all.

> By choosing to build Qt with GLES on ARM64, we make Debian a more
> attractive platform for vendors who'd like to target ARM64 boards.

We should make it attractive for vendors to release their code under
a free software (DFSG) license. That way anyone would be able to hack on it
and add missing support for a different OpenGL variant, if needed.

That said, as Lisandro announced, we will be happy to make any decision
if there is either a consensus or a TC decision about it.

[1]: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2018/11/msg00622.html

--
Dmitry Shachnev
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