Matthew Garrett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 20:36 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: >> It's a perfectly reasonable means to discriminate. One is *in the >> hardware*. If I buy a widget, I don't care whether it uses firmware >> in an eeprom or a well-trained gerbil. It's a box. Software on my >> CPU is different. > > The firmware is never executed on your CPU.
The driver is. Look, there are two circumstances here: * If the firmware's on an eeprom, I could build another device just like that one but implemented with clever rodents instead. And the driver would still work. * If the firmware's a loaded bitstring, I can't build another device unless it also emulates execution of the firmware -- because somebody might change the firmware, and expect changed functionality. In other words, if the firmware's in a box we can treat the whole box as a hardware machine. If the firmware's an exposed software blob, we have to treat it like one and recognize the dependencies. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
