Re: On the freeness of a BLOB-containing driver

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Bruce Perens wrote:
>
>A good hardware design would put this code in FLASH on the board.

Depends on what you mean by a "good hardware design". For example, a
lot of the USB dongles becoming common would be significantly bigger
and/or more expensive if they had to have sufficient space on-board
for a complete firmware implementation. As cost and size can be
_everything_ on these devices, downloading firmware each time they are
started/connected can actually be a good design choice.

>If you don't have a good hardware design, BLOBs belong in files, not
>the driver. The 2.6 kernel boots up with at least initramfs
>accessable to it, and later initrd, if it needs a BLOB it should load
>it from there.

Agreed on this bit.

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...