On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:38:31AM +0000, Aurelien Jarno wrote: > Romain Beauxis a écrit : > > Le Tuesday 21 October 2008 13:10:28 Peter Clifton, vous avez écrit : > >> Having no source-code for firmware is hardly that different to having a > >> completely open-source driver which does un-told magic by poking > >> un-documented registers in a complex chip. Think Intel graphics before > >> they released documentation for (some of) their chips. > > > > Agreed, though it does not restrain us from asking for free firmware. > > > > If I recall well, one of the origin of the GNU fondation was the fact that > > having free drivers alowed one to actually *fix* issues he may have with his > > *own* hardware. Then, the very same reasoning can apply to binary firmware. > > > > So, yes this is a brand new issue, that comes from the new way of designing > > hardware. But that doesn't mean we should give up and remain behind the line > > that was drawn 20 (or so) years ago. We now should also ask for open source > > firmware for the very same reason that this huge effort toward free drivers > > was done. If we did it for drivers, there's no reason we can't suceed for > > firmwares. > > > > And we should delay the release by 5 years until we have them... I fear the hardware will be old at that time… -- ·O· Pierre Habouzit ··O madcoder@debian.org OOO http://www.madism.org
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