> New Lemote Machines use an AMD graphics card, which requires a binary blob. > Their BIOS is free, but you can't use 3D with free software until one > writes a free replacement. ThinkPenguin machines do not have a free > BIOS, but their graphics card works with free software.
There are more blobs: VGA ROM blob included in their boot firmware, it contains data and interpreted code used for modesetting; ME, PFP and RLC microcode loaded by the kernel. The first one (and the last one for some chips, probably not this one) is required for modesetting, the rest is needed only for acceleration (2d, 3d, video). If not for the VGA ROM blob, it would be easy to use it without the microcode and with unaccelerated graphics (like the old YeeLoongs with acceleration useful only with old software). > I think it is currently impossible to write a free replacement for the > nonfree microcode, without knowing the internals of the graphics > hardware. The Nouveau project had some cards, some microcode extracted from the Nvidia driver and they have reverse engineered the ISAs used and implemented free generators for such microcode. I don't know how this could be more difficult in case of Radeon microcode. The VGA ROM blob is different, it's unused x86 code and some tables of known formats (accessed by the kernel module). So it might be easier to replace. Lemote supports a different solution for this problem: their future devices will use Loongson 2H as southbridge with a different GPU design. I don't know more about it. > It might be better to support free hardware projects such as > OpenCores and Milkymist that develop freedom friendly hardware. It would be, although it's very difficult to make it widely available and practically useful as a replacement for personal computers. And FPGAs have other software freedom problems. > I found an artice about (L)GPLed semiconductor cores at: > http://jolt.law.harvard.edu/articles/pdf/v25/25HarvJLTech131.pdf > Unforunately it uses the words “Intellectual Property” and “Open > Source”. Seems interesting, although not related to this issue (licenses can help, but they won't solve the problem of hardware depending on nonfree software without designing and producing the hardware).
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