Re: [DRAFT] resolving DFSG violations
"Jeff Carr" <basilarchia@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is hardware, for which to function, will always, for the
> lifetime of the equipment, require a firmware blob to operate. This
> will always be the case; there will never be a human readable version.
> It will never be possible to compile it (with non-free compilers) from
> source code.
How can that be? (That is an ernest question)
The engineers will have some description of what the firmware should do
(in terms of what to read and write from which register etc., not only
in terms of "initialize communication"), and some rules how to translate
these procedures into a binary blob.
I doubt the translation needs to be done by hand, instead of by a
compiler, but even if it was, wouldn't the software be useful? And
couldn't the "description of what the firmware should do" be treated as
the source, then?
I mean, your argument seems to be "there is no such thing as source for
firmware, so we cannot possibly require it". But isn't that description
of the function just the source?
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (TeXLive)
ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg
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