Only partially true on the Pi4: The complete OpenGL stack is now open source using Mesa (it was optional on previous models). Video decoding is slowly moving over from the closed MMAL stack to KMS and V4L2. The boot firmware is still closed though.

> The boot firmware is still closed though.

Not much worse than a PC then in that regard.

UPDATE - mine fault. CPU doesn't have AES instructions!

Actually it is.

For example some RPi CPUs have AES acceleration instructions built similar as AES-NI on x86. But due firmware limit we can't use them.

Probably it's licensing and pricing issue...

I looked it up. That's not true. The hardware isn't there, and would require the RPi foundation purchase a license to implement.

See the engineer reply in this thread:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=2078...

> That is licence for the HW, so you buy it then add the requisite HW to the die, so no, it cannot be added later without redeisgning the HW, which would cost about $1M Plus the licence....

Can't edit my own post, but please stop downvoting mobilio. They admitted they were wrong, and there's no shame in that.

Even if they had been wrong, they shouldn't necessarily have been downvoted, because it still ended up adding to the discussion.

It's an export law issue. Raspberry Pi is an educational product that should be exportable all around the world. They can't let crypto regulation laws upend that goal.

There is open RPi boot firmware here:

https://github.com/librerpi/rpi-open-firmware/

Wasn't one of the issues with earlier Pi versions that the driver just serialized high-level GLES-like commands to a front-end processor that ran a huge closed firmware blob? All GPUs have built-in command processors but this was closer to a full driver running as a firmware blob on an auxiliary CPU.

Video decoding is still a binary blob. There is no documentation to start writing your own decoders.

The video core documentation for the gpu is open and you can actually write code for the GPU (and an open source assembler exists)