On Feb 15, 2008, at 3:49 PM, joerg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Am Fr 15. Februar 2008 schrieb Brandon Kruse:
In that case it is not an open phone or platform.
It's a philosophical question, where "open" has it's limits. E.g.
you probably
consider a plain vanilla x86 GNU/linux desktop system to be pretty
much "true
open". However i guess you have no idea at all of the firmware that's
managing your harddisk in this system. That's for a simple reason: IDE
interface is age old (and so all HD's (SATA, SCSII) inherited this
way we are
looking at these devices), it is "just working", and it's well
documented.
Virtually nobody cares about the firmware behind this interface,
mainly
because it doesn't have a chance to stop you from doing anything you
like on
the _main_system_. I'm almost certain there's a hacker somewhere out
there,
who likes to mod his HD so the head motors will produce funny
sounds, and
another one thinks he can tune transfer rates even another 10k/s.
However i
never seen FOSS HD firmware.
Point taken. My opinion is versus things that COULD change and things
that will never change, good point though.
It is well worth the
investigation to go fully open somehow IMO.
Sure. But it's a silly idea to try and force the subsystem
manufacturers by
refusing to support their closed source firmware updates. When
Seagate comes
with a DOS-only firmware updater to add some cool new features to
their
drives, OM says "No, it's not FOSS!". Seagate (or here, the chip
fabs) don't
care. But OM deprives NEO owners of any means to have a new firmware
for
these subsystems. If a user doesn't like to have closed source on
his device,
she is free delete or not install it. But OM will not achieve
anything by
refusing to provide closed source drivers. I think all they get is a
huge
number of returns, or less sales (at least for me).
And OM(!) isn't willing or able to provide circuit diagrams, so any
open
drivers are extremely hard to develop. In my opinion they can't do
both,
refuse to support closed source updates *and* keep the hw specs
closed. Not
if they care about their customers.
Not to mention, NEO will not be "open" at all as long as the
hardware is
a 'big mystery'. A laugh to start with closed firmware topic.
Also agreed. I would love an API decided by the community, not sure
that would ever work but would be great. Point above, stallman uses an
OLPC (open hardware) and for the things that are availinle as open
(orinoco wireless) he has the on board wireless disabled.
If there is no way to open what we want, our option is to sit and die
in wait of such, or move on with an API decided by us (which pooint
you made and I agree, would be great)
But I guess we could be like olpc and have a MOSTLY open platform
(wifi chip is not, as you could have guessed)
I'd like it more to see OM pushing manufacturers to provide a
guaranteed API,
which is specified by community, and not to care about _how_ the
mfactrs
achieve to fulfill this contract. Than to nag manufacturers to open
the
sources of firmware, "because we can do better, and do not want to
use what
we paid for".
jOERG
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