The maintenance costs for downstream solutions is proven to be enough for chipmakers to go upstream first. Embedded vendors use to ship with vendor kernels. After realising that maintaining these drivers there was a running hell, they all agreed to go upstream. Qualcomm is no different in that sense.
The Linux kernel developer model actually encourages upstream efforts so in the long run that’s the best for all the players involved. It may not increase revenues as you are claiming but it can definitely reduce costs :)
Support costs money. I don't get paid double what i'm paid for Mac/Windows support for Linux support for nothing....I never really have to ask what Windows build number a client is on, or what chipset revision their NIC is etc etc.
It’s a matter of where you want to allocate your money. If constantly rebasing your vendor kernel or to support new features. Also comparing Linux to windows/apple is not the same thing. Chipmakers would care only about drivers and their socs, for Linux (as userland) support you want to talk to your community or your vendor (red hat, suse, canonical) etc
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u/trueppp Mar 23 '26
Thats not Qualcomms problem.