This looks pretty good. The powerful combination of Free Software, ARM chips and Chinese manufacturing seems to have been ready to go for the last few years but has been held up by culture clash, language barriers and suspicion between the software and hardware manufacturing sides, and the lack of Free Software friendly GPUs.
This could finally be the dam-breaker, particularly if some of the cheap devices (complete tablets/phones etc.) produced by manufacturers uninterested in GPL compliance could still be used because the chip manufacturer is on board and providing the necessary support info.
edit: I was mistaken, the Mali GPU still requires proprietary code for 3D, I'd got it mixed up with the OMAP in my Samsung Galaxy.
"Regarding Software Freedom: the caveat regarding this CPU is that it requires ARM-proprietary libraries for the 3D Graphics (as does virtually every single suitable consumer-grade embedded SoC on the planet with the almost exclusive sole exception of the Ingenic jz4760 and some of the TI ARM Cortex OMAP and Sitara SoCs). However, simply not using the proprietary MALI 3D GPU does not impact any other functionality in any way."
This could finally be the dam-breaker, particularly if some of the cheap devices (complete tablets/phones etc.) produced by manufacturers uninterested in GPL compliance could still be used because the chip manufacturer is on board and providing the necessary support info.
edit: I was mistaken, the Mali GPU still requires proprietary code for 3D, I'd got it mixed up with the OMAP in my Samsung Galaxy.
"Regarding Software Freedom: the caveat regarding this CPU is that it requires ARM-proprietary libraries for the 3D Graphics (as does virtually every single suitable consumer-grade embedded SoC on the planet with the almost exclusive sole exception of the Ingenic jz4760 and some of the TI ARM Cortex OMAP and Sitara SoCs). However, simply not using the proprietary MALI 3D GPU does not impact any other functionality in any way."
Still one more step in the right direction.