But the thing would be that, if you were to take the time to listen to John's
talk, they're not saying that that stuff is OK. You mentioned another forum
thread. It's important remember that other people talking is not the FSF.
This is why I steered you to them. To hear things out of the horse's mouth,
so to speak.
From what I hear in the talk, they're not trying to say stuff in a ROM is
acceptable. And so my interpretation is that their take would be both the
original and updated microcode are not acceptable.
A quote from someone in the audience: "Someone wrote the microcode that runs
inside your Intel processor as well, that Intel put in there, that they can't
get out. So does that mean that, therefore, you have to have a, in order for
a system to be free, that the processor design -- right down to the microcode
-- you know, so there's a definitional problem going down as well as going
up, and the FSF isn't going to say "We're not going to run Intel chips until
Intel release the source to all of their microcode." So they've got to draw a
line somewhere, and where John has drawn it seems like a pretty clear line to
draw."
For right now. As the world changes I look forward to that line being pushed
further down the stack.
