On Mar 29, 2009, Brian Gough <b...@network-theory.co.uk> wrote:
> Before I heard your talk I had an impression that the "firmware" in
> the Linux kernel was very small -- essentially negligible -- no more
> than a few magic bytes to initialise a device here and there, or small
> data tables. I did not realise that there were source files with 300k
> of hex data in them, for example.
I see. Yeah, that's kind of a big difference, isn't it?
Those were the most offensive examples I had, though, which is why I
chose them for the slides, for they're both technically and legally
worrisome. If that doesn't get someone's attention, I guess nothing
will.
(And just to be clear, it's 300k of data once you turn the hex into
actual bytes; it's some 3-4 times larger than that in the, erhm, "trojan
hource" ;-) form.)
> I don't know where I got this impression - perhaps from the media,
> perhaps from circular reasoning ("Linux is GPLed, GPL means free
> software, therefore Linux is free"). I never really questioned this
> belief because I started out with the assumption that Linux is free.
/me nods strongly
You're right, we ought to work to break this false impression, it is
quite widespread indeed.
Thanks for bringing this very important point to light.
--
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/ FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer
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