I'll give you a "real world" example that binds companies.
The US FCC, for regulator reasons, does *NOT* want WLAN cards to be reprogrammable to
broadcast in other frequencies.
This means that at least parts of *ALL* WLAN firmware these days is basically
"closed" these days.
From Broadcom to Intel, this is the reality, sorry.
This has
been the case since the original Linux firmware tools were developed for the Intersil
PRISM*1* cards.
Furthermore, in many other cases, firmware is often *NOT* merely "source code."
In many cases and significant portions, it's often pure machine code or other pure
byte code, sometimes just binary data/values.
Allowing users to tinker with this code leads to massive support issues (even beyond what
they can already do with the loader already - which is a support issue).
The Linux community has *NO* business dorking with the firmware logic othat drives the
on-device intelligence.
Linux only needs to know how to interface with the device, not how to change the
device's internal logic.
Anyone who knows the first thing about embedded or intelligent hardware device development
knows this!
It is *NOT* against the terms of the GPL license, and Linus himself has talked about this
repeatedly.
We're *NOT* talking about support functions in the Linux kernel itself (e.g., they are
not the same as GPU memory functions, such as those from ATI or nVidia, that go in the
kernel itself).
It's gross ignorance and blanket statements like this that make us EEs and other
hardware and device friver developers roll our eyes!
Most of the time the "firmware update" option included in the kernel is just an
"added option" in a kernel driver so you don't have to boot into DOS.
The driver does *NOT* require it to function in Linux at all!
Another example ...
Linux talks to the uC/ASIC on a true hardware RAID card, like the PPC400 on the AMCC/3Ware
products.
The kernel has *NO* business changing how the on-board PPC400 uses it's memory and
it's ATA channels.
Linux *NEVER* communications directly to those components (except for DMA as setup by the
PPC).
So if you do *NOT* know the first thing of what I'm talking about, you have *NO*
business talking about it from the standpoint of ignorance.
Leave the legal debate to the sound, technically knowledgable developers who do.
Otherwise, you're only going to mis-represent the issue - especially when it's
often *NOT* a GPL issue either.
-- Bryan
*1*NOTE: I used to work with Mark Mathews and Brian Mathews at AVS.
Brian Mathews (EE) helped develop the PRISM MAC hardware at Intersil.
Mark Mathews (CS) developed the original tools for various PRISM functions, including
firmware and other frequency support/modification.
Many of these functions canNOT be open source because of FCC mandate.
--
Bryan J Smith - mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
-----Original Message-----
From: "Rodrigo Padula" <rodrigopadula(a)gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:46:40
To:"For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base"
<fedora-marketing-list(a)redhat.com>
Subject: Re: Infinite Freedom???
Firmware IS SOFTWARE!! <br><br>firmware = software<br><br>The FSF
considers firmware as software.<br><br>If the firmware isnt free, the Fedora
isnt FREE!! <br><br>We can't change the firmware, then the firmware
isn't FREE!!
<br><br>Where are the Infinite Freedom ? Freedom to change the Code, to change
the firmware!!<br><br>Please, read this <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware">http://en.wikip...
"<b>firmware
</b> is software"<br><br><br>Rodrigo Padula de
Oliveira<br><a
href="http://www.projetofedora.org">www.projetofedora.org</a><br><br><div><span
class="gmail_quote">On 6/19/07, <b
class="gmail_sendername">Rex Dieter</b>
<<a
href="mailto:rdieter@math.unl.edu">rdieter@math.unl.edu</a>>
wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left:
1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left:
1ex;">Rodrigo Padula wrote:
<br><br>> - FREE SOFTWARE DEFINITION - By Free Software
Foundation<br>...<br>> These firmwares below affect us directly, affect
our freedom!<br><br>software != firmware.<br><br>The
Board's current position is that firmware (that doesn't run on the host
<br>CPU) is a reasonable exception (to modifiability). It is our
hope that<br>once these ground-rules are established and well understood,
hardware<br>manufacturers will be more willing to produce/support high-quality
linux
<br>drivers (preferably in the upstream kernel).<br><br>--
Rex<br><br>--<br>Fedora-marketing-list mailing list<br><a
href="mailto:Fedora-marketing-list@redhat.com">Fedora-marketing-list@redhat.com</a><br><a
href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list&...
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list</a>&l...
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