Not generic firmware, this particular firmware. 1-2K GBP is sort of
what a geenrous boss might offer in kind to an employee to 'rescue'
that amount on their own time when the source has been lost. Yes, if
you're actually paying commercial rate for it - no way. I guessed,
perhaps wrongly,
rt2x00 has 2KiB to 8KiB of 8051 code. ath9k_htc uses 52KiB to 72KiB of
Xtensa code. Old Broadcom cards (reverse engineered) had a custom
instruction set and ~96 KiB firmware (?), new ones are 200-600 KiB of
ARM code. Intel is 148KiB to 692KiB, probably custom ISA. Marvell
Libertas has 120 KiB
Disassembling is allowed in the EU in specific cases, these might be
enough to write a free driver. I don't know how it's done in other
jurisdictions. People who reverse engineer firmware for other devices
do disassemble it. All firmware with free replacements has nonfree
licenses, it's not
Just to make it clear for other people, we're talking about rt2860.bin, which
is the firmware used in some PCI ralink cards including 2790, 3090 (which I
have), and 2860.
I was trying to find the architecture, so thanks for the information. After
looking online, I see that you're right
Thanks, that's exactly what I was trying to say! :-)
$1-2k to reverse engineer the firmware? I think not. If it were that cheap
we'd have done it a long time ago. If you think you can reverse engineer the
firmware on ath10k or another 802.11ac or 802.11ad device for that amount let
me know. Heck- I'm wiling to shell out thousands of dollars
Anybody interested in hacking on a free replacement firmware should get in
touch with me. We can help fund it (parts, bounty, etc).
I'm not a lawyer so I'm definitely going to refrain from commenting on the
legal aspect. I think what I was trying to say is the legalities shouldn't
excuse or determine what we think.
I understand your points in any event. I don't know if they translate into
the real world or not. I can
I think you've missed that I've been discussing this in the manner of
a Medical Examiner dictating the details of the corpse she's
dissecting. Like many Brit's I leave editorial to peoples' own
intelligence, they can easily presume from me being an Associate
Member here and FSF I am committed
IMO wrong order Chris
#1 financial resources
All the others are reliant on them. Always has been the case.
That's why I buy from you when you have the sort of thing I need,
take out appropriate Associate Memberships, sponsor fundraisers etc.
Software freedom won't happen on the sector
Maybe crowdfunding would be a good idea?
Maybe crowdfunding would be a good idea?
It is, but we also need things like a huge raft of small free
software businesses using all the different business models in
April's document on them. Amongst my friends in proprietary stuff
students being 'Linux(sic) until graduation' is a joke. In
So make the above specific to this topic. The REing of the firware should be
appearing as a charged line item 'Making existng laptops compatible' in one
of these small businesses invoices when they're up and running.
Or to put it another way... More Rubéns, More Chrises
I was thinking about the ones originally released rather than derivative
works in relation to the binary being embedded in a GNU GPL'd driver and thus
not really being 100% free. This mainly due to the fact people are linking to
these GNU GPL'd drivers, investigating the source, not finding
rt2x00 isn't a derivative work, and even to people who don't care about
nonfree blobs, the drivers on the site are misleading because rt2x00 is
already integrated in Linux.
My remark about the size of the nonfree blob was more about reverse
engineering and writing a replacement, and the
I don't see how you can call something free if the code is not available.
While I'd agree with the general tone of shades, I wouldn't call something
free or legally free even just because it was under the GNU GPL license. If I
were to say it were mostly free that's a more accurate statement.
I'm not sure about the legality of disassembling that blob, because although
it should be GPL (and the website says it's GPL) there's no source code which
is a requirement of the GPL. And if you open the zip file with the firmware,
there's a nonfree license.
Anyway, I compiled the rt2x00
I'm not sure if we're just having a combination glass half full/half
empty and semantics argument. However, I'll explain why I affected
the nonce term 'legally free.'
GNU FSDG rightly excludes both blobs and obfuscated code under free
licenses because they interfere with users' meaningful
Best go to email.
A big IANAL here. We're coming at this from different angles. Yes non-free
drivers are a GPL violation. However, these drivers and firmware (or at
least the ones I've tried) are click-through licensed by Mediatek under the
GPL and you seem to idicate some of the source confirms that too.
Yeah, I don't think we can get it. On the other hand, the Ralink firmware
blobs are the smallest in the whole linux-firmware.git tree. And a developer
of rt2x00 said
One of the things I like about the Ralink hardware is that almost everything
that really matters is handled in software.
I think the way we're phrasing this is off.
Quite a bit of GPL licensed code violates the principles of the GPL and free
software movement. This is something that distinguishes the free software
movement from the open source movement. open source proponent have no
problem with non-free
In most cases the GNU GPL licensed driver has separate firmware, but in
other cases, like the Ralink drivers that firmware is non-free and embedded
within the free code and thus not really free (and particularly not in any
useful way).
The drivers on Mediatek website are the old drivers
I'm going to provide a bit of information on what chipsets are free software
friendly and contain no non-free parts (embedded or otherwise) in most cases:
RTL8187L/RTL8187B/RTL8187 - USB G wireless Adapters
AR9271/AR9170/AR7010+AR9280 - USB N Wireless Adapters
AR9280/AR9281/AR9285/AR9287 -
Where is that Lenovo spyware located: in BIOS or firmware of another
chip? I know two related issues: spyware in their BIOS (replaced by
coreboot/libreboot) and ME firmware in all models since X61 (while only
X60 is supported by libreboot), this one is different.
Avoiding laptop manufacturers
I'm not sure. Lenovo systems though have a number of different firmware
pieces. Simply flashing LibreBoot doesn't fix it. That much I know. You might
be able to write over it or something similar. It doesn't solve the problem
that it exists in the first place though.
I think your missing
Unless we want free boot firmware, we should choose option 2, boycott
Apple and Lenovo. If we want free boot firmware, we need laptops
similar to ones for which hard reverse engineering work was done, like
Lenovo X60 or the Apple laptop using similar chips.
A modified Lenovo laptop being the
Yea- ultimately the best solution is neither of the above. The best solution
is to move away from x86. I think we would need a more coordinated effort to
do that. We need 1. people with reverse engineering skills, 2. people with
some development background/packaging skills (Rubén a.k.a.
Check all mixers to make sure it's not muted. E.g. alsamixer from the command
line. (m to un/mute a channel) If memory serves double clicking or was it
right clicking the gnome sound volume applet takes you to a pulse audio GUI
mixer.
Note that Asus are not in the Chris gives [1] as known to anti-feature their
BIOSes to stop you replacing the WiFi card. So finding a YouTube video on
how to open yours are replacing the WiFi PCIe card (might be half height?)
with one from ebay or somewhere similar would seem to be a good
Oo, look like the other Ralink device on the forum today - it is all licensed
under the GPL
http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads/rt2860pcimpcicbpciert2760rt2790rt2860rt2890/
Just it seems you need to get reverse engineering so we can have the source
to the firmware.
I'd better poiint out the above is 'Shenzen humour' which is endemic among
hardware design engineers. Don't do without an attourney.
Lol, I have rt3090 and I always found that funny (RT3090 firmware is same as
RT2860)
Also: http://www.mediatek.com/en/downloads/rt3090pcie/
and:
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/linux-libre-fw.git/tree/rt2x00-fw/README
(this is exactly what you were just talking about)
And in the driver,
Warning: These links contain nonfree firmware, just for listing the GPL
violations.
All (nonfree) Ralink firmware images can be found here. The files are
rt*.bin.
RT2501PCI/ mPCI/ CB(RT61:RT2561/ RT2561S/ RT2661)
For some reason they have .bin files but the firmware images are also
It's pretty hard for a dev to comply with a license in a language they don't
understand for a legal code they have no idea about. Best ask FSFLA's
Linux-libre team if they report GPL violations like this which they find in
deblobbing to the FSF licensing team or similar?
Yeah, I was thinking of asking someone more knowledgeable on this topic
before contacting Mediatek. Mediatek doesn't seem too good with GPL
compliance (just search mediatek gpl)
I just purchased a EEE PC B202 which has a Ralink RT2790 wireless card. Does
anyone know if there are free drivers for this card? I'm running a stock
Trisquel 6.01 system. I guess the alternative will be a USB dongle.
Thanks for your time.
The Debian page[1] for the driver talks of them removing the firmware
from their kernel, so presumably it's non-free.
[1] https://wiki.debian.org/rt2860sta
Thank you leny2010. I just noticed that the sound is not working either.
Perhaps I should have done my homework!
40 matches
Mail list logo
