Re: firmware or software? was Re: ITP plex86, if it complies to DFSG
On Mon, Dec 11, 2000 at 12:44:07PM -0800, ferret@phonewave.net wrote:
> So, if we take the Creative DXr2 DVD decoder board, for a working example:
> The player, utilities, and kernel driver are released under the GPL
> version 2. Unfortunately, to make the board actually work, we have to
> upload a file using the supplied tool to the board. is this file firmware
> or software?
That's firmware. I would define firmware as anything which is not
running on the host CPU. Therefore, the VGA BIOS is not firmware.
> What if I write a program that emulates the DXr2 board on my host CPU? Is
> the upload file firmware or software now? And if it is different than when
> it gets uploaded to the board, why?
You are executing the software now on your PC. This is no different
to emulating old micro systems (vice, xspectemu, x48). So whatever
the rule is for those systems should apply to your DXr2 emulator.
It appears that xspectemu and x48 are both in main. apple2
is in contrib. Pose (Palm OS emulator) is in contrib. simh
(old DEC computer emulator) is in non-free. xcopilot (Palm)
is in contrib. uae (Amiga) is in contrib. stella (Atari 2600)
is in non-free. nestra is in contrib (ROMs not included).
xmame is non non-free (ROMs not included). xzx is in non-free.
xtrs is in contrib (ROMs not included). ines is in non-free.
snes9x-svga is in non-free. atari800 is in contrib.
There ARE ROMs in the distribution for simh (simh-unix-images,
simh-rsts-images), both in non-free. Unfortunately this is
not a good example because simh itself does not allow
commercial use, so it's in non-free anyway.
So most of these seem to be outside of main, because you need
non-free ROMs. x48 does not seem to belong in main since there
are no free ROMs for it (actually, no freely available ROMs
at all).
If one of these emulators is free and has freely
available ROMs, I wonder which section it's in? I don't have
time to check them all at the moment.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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