Re: more evil firmwares found
On Mon, Apr 12, 2004 at 09:50:18PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> >> May I repeat that all of the hardware on two different recent machines in
> >> this house runs *without* requiring non-free firmware downloads?
> (a) Nobody seems to be *listening*; they keep saying "Everyone will need
> this firmware!".
> (b) I didn't pick *any* of this stuff with an eye to avoiding non-free
> firmware; it's a completely random sample.
> (c) It's all fairly cheap.
> Therefore, I think the people who keep saying "Most people will need this
> firmware!" are smoking crack or something.
Tell me, what 802.11g hardware do you use? There is three harware chips
available, one has a nvidia style driver, and other two firmwares. And
FCC excplictly forbids[1] distributing radio drivers in user-modifiable
form.
I still fail to see how a device that doesn't have persistent memory to
store it's firmware is somehow so evil that we have excorcise support
for those devices out of Linux... However, hardware that wastes
enviroiment with an extra flash chip and/or has unmodifiable firmware
is somehow more kosher and should be used instead.
[1] http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Orders/2001/fcc01264.pdf
--
Riku Voipio | riku.voipio at iki.fi |
kirkkonummentie 33 | +358 44 5000343 --+--
02140 Espoo | |
dark> A bad analogy is like leaky screwdriver |
Reply to: