On Friday 24 November 2006 19:31, Petter Urkedal wrote: > > I think the issue of closed firmware value add boils down to how the > product is marketed. We might require that when the OHF mark is > used, then the company must distinguish the features provided by the > hardware from those added by any proprietary firmware and drivers. > That is, when OHF mark is used in marketing, the marketing must be > fair with respect to the OHF mark. Otherwise would be misleading > advertising. Once the FOSS community has created a firmware/software > stack, the implied features can be advertised along with the OHF > mark. In practise this could be done by requiring that a statement > is placed next to the logo with information where to find the > alternative feature-set.
That's a good point. But what if the hardware didn't have firmware, would open hardware for which proprietary drivers existed be any less open? I'd say that in that case, the manufacturer would be entitled to calling it open hardware, since the HDL is available and drivers aren't hardware. So maybe the question is whether the firmware is part of the hardware. If it is, then the openness of the firmware affects the openness of the hardware. If it is part of the driver, then it doesn't. I think it's hard to make a clear definition here. How is firmware different from software? Lourens
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