2010/1/7 Bernie Innocenti <[email protected]>: > On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 14:22 +0100, Rubén Rodríguez Pérez wrote: >> I didn't know the XO required non-free drivers. Where can I find more >> details on this? > > The driver is free, but it uses non-free firmware, which in the past has > been causing us all sort of trouble. Ironically, the Marvell chip is > codenamed "libertas": > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Libertas > > Since Marvell refused to open the firmware, Deepak and Cozybit have been > working on a replacement firmware, called thinmac: > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Libertas_Thinfirmware_HOWTO > > > Besides the wifi firmware, most of the XO-1's power management is done > by the EC, an Intel 8051 co-processor: > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ec_specification > > Sadly, the EC firmware is proprietary. Quanta, the copyright holder, > refuses to release any information on it, let alone the source code. > There was an effort to rewrite a free version of it, but it looks like > it's been swamped: > > http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OpenEC > http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/openec > > BTW, the Lemote Yeeloong notebook, which is supposed to be the most free > netbook on this planet, contains the same EC chip of the XO-1. It > probably runs yet another proprietary fork of the Quanta firmware. > > The situation improved greatly over the last 10 years, but there's still > a lot of work still to be done by those who do care about freedom in > computing. >
For what it is worth, it would be a fair estimate to say that over 50% of the headaches we had in relationship to getting the OLPC XO-1 up and running were related to bugs and bad programming practices in the proprietary EC code. A sad situation and extremely inefficient. That said, I think Quanta actually licenses the EC software from a 3rd party. They cannot make it free themselves :( -walter > -- > // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/ > \X/ Sugar Labs - http://sugarlabs.org/ > > _______________________________________________ > SoaS mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas > -- Walter Bender Sugar Labs http://www.sugarlabs.org _______________________________________________ SoaS mailing list [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/soas
