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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://thebs413.blogspot.com Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile -----Original Message----- From: "Rodrigo Padula" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 18:46:40 To:"For discussions about marketing and expanding the Fedora user base" <[email protected]> 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.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware</a> "<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:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</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:[email protected]";>[email protected]</a><br><a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list";> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list</a><br></blockquote></div><br> -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list -- Fedora-marketing-list mailing list [email protected] https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-marketing-list
