gaming extensions to the kernel

[Alessandro Pistocchi]

Hi all,

I have managed to create some exciting, gaming-specific extensions to the
OpenBSD kernel,
specifically for an arm64 raspberry pi 4.

I would like to turn this into a product that people enjoy if possible and
I would be happy to
make something that benefits the OpenBSD community as well somehow. I am
enjoying
working on OpenBSD and am genuinely happy to give something back if I can.

I started a discussion on other channels about this and got quite a bit of
resistance,
mainly because I wasn't planning to send diffs for what I am doing.

My reasoning for not sending them is that the changes I made could create
security
issues for ordinary users, and I think that it would be a nightmare to
maintain only
to be able to play smoother games on a single platform, which in the grand
scheme
of things is quite small.

To give you an idea, I am giving exclusive access to 3 out of 4 cpu cores
to a game
and I give the game quite a few pages of contiguous memory for the
framebuffer.
I give all that back to openbsd when the game ends. OpenBSD cannot interrupt
the game on those 3 cores, it can only kill the game if needed. That's not
stuff that
should go into the official kernel, right?

What I was thinking was more like "I go on and try to make and sell my
product and
when I make money I donate a percentage of the profits to the OpenBSD
Foundation".

Is that acceptable? Or alternatively, what is the "right" way of doing
something like that?

Thanks :-)
Alessandro

[Stuart Henderson]

Post by Alessandro Pistocchi
I have managed to create some exciting, gaming-specific extensions to
the OpenBSD kernel, specifically for an arm64 raspberry pi 4.
I would like to turn this into a product that people enjoy if possible
and I would be happy to make something that benefits the OpenBSD
community as well somehow. I am enjoying working on OpenBSD and am
genuinely happy to give something back if I can.
I started a discussion on other channels about this and got quite a
bit of resistance, mainly because I wasn't planning to send diffs for
what I am doing.
My reasoning for not sending them is that the changes I made could
create security issues for ordinary users, and I think that it would
be a nightmare to maintain only to be able to play smoother games on a
single platform, which in the grand scheme of things is quite small.
To give you an idea, I am giving exclusive access to 3 out of 4 cpu
cores to a game and I give the game quite a few pages of contiguous
memory for the framebuffer. I give all that back to openbsd when the
game ends. OpenBSD cannot interrupt the game on those 3 cores, it can
only kill the game if needed. That's not stuff that should go into the
official kernel, right?

Seems unlikely.

Post by Alessandro Pistocchi
What I was thinking was more like "I go on and try to make and sell my
product and when I make money I donate a percentage of the profits to
the OpenBSD Foundation".
Is that acceptable? Or alternatively, what is the "right" way of doing
something like that?

I don't think there's any issue with that. The license on the code is
deliberately non-restrictive. No requirement to make a donation but that
certainly would be a nice thing to do.