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Re: more evil firmwares found



Eduard Bloch wrote:
#include <hallo.h>
* Nathanael Nerode [Wed, Apr 14 2004, 01:49:03PM]:


What else? Do you realize that you declare the most part of sold
hardware (in some areas) as evil and dead stuff, and the only
explanation/advice you provide is: buy-a-new-hardware-dude. What about
simple people that spent >>1k€ for a pre-configured box and expect to
run Linux on them? They cannot simply go and replace parts, this means a
lot of money (and time to sell the old components again).

This happens regardless.  Look at, to use your own example, Winmodems.


7 years ago, I
could laugh about winmodems and such crap because they were an
exception. Today, this happens more and more often.

So you don't laugh at winmodems any more.  I assume you see the problem with
being locked in to non-free software?...


LOL. You just indicated that you don't know what you are talking about.
The "winmodems" are indeed bad hardware, they don't upload the firmware
into the device but do everything in the driver. Almost off-topic here.
So they do their computation in a 486 rather than in a DSP. From the point of view of freedom, what's the *difference*?

(a) Nobody seems to be *listening*; they keep saying "Everyone will need
this firmware!".

No. I think you are blinded after fighting the evil non-free software,
so much that you don't see the limits of feasibility.

And I think you're seeing the limits of feasibility where they aren't.


The limits are there. You just dreamed that you can force hardware
vendors to share their IP, giving away things they need to earn the
money to survive. But now it's time to wake up.
Um, people said the same thing about software vendors when saying that free software was an impossibility.

Anyway, I'm not trying to "force" anyone to to anything. I'm saying that it is feasible to have a Debian system which requires no firmware downloads, and I provided proof. You're saying that... something... is not feasible (at this point I have no idea what), and apparently attributing the opposite view to me.

(b) I didn't pick *any* of this stuff with an eye to avoiding non-free
firmware; it's a completely random sample.

Same story.

As what?


As above. You construct the examples or construct explanations to make
them look non-DSFG-free. By ignoring explanations that tell you
something different.
OK, now you're just being rude. I haven't ignored anything; I find those "explanations" extremely unconvincing, and I've explained why.

You're also coming out with non-sequiters. The thing to which you said "same story" was me pointing out that a random sample of hardware didn't require any downloaded "firmware". What does that have to do with "mak[ing things] look non-DFSG free"? *mind boggles*

I'll wait for you to make sense.  :-)

GPLed drivers with just some (free modifiable and redistributable BLOBs)
are an acceptable solution.

Fine; if they're acceptable to you, go ahead and use them.  I have no
problem with that, and I use non-free software as well.   But they're not a
DFSG-free-software solution unless the blobs are DFSG-free software.


They are. As long as you cannot *proove* that they are not the preferred
for of modification (and this can be very hard since Linux driver
developers never modify it), don't claim that they are not DSFG-free.
It's already been pointed out by others that you've put the burden of proof on the wrong side from a legal point of view, and from the point of view of the traditional methods of DFSG-interpretation; the logical consequences of this point of view have also been explained (letting in, for example, mplayer before the license problems were cleared up), and appear to be contrary to Debian's historical practice.

Anyway, what about blobs which are *not* even apparently GPL-licensed? I've found those in the kernel sources too. Would you at least agree that those had better go?



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