Re: LCC and blobs
On Thu, Dec 23, 2004 at 10:55:04PM -0500, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
> md@Linux.IT (Marco d'Itri) writes:
> >> Great. Then the driver operates differently depending on the presence
> >> of additional software -- it needs a Linux kernel and the firmware.
> > But then drivers also "depend" on "additional softwares" stored in
> > flash EEPROMs in devices.
>
> That's not software. That's firmware, at best -- you can look at it
> as software, but then you don't get to distribute any drivers. It is
> also internally consistent to think of chips as hardware and
> distribute drivers appropriately. It is never consistent to think of
> files on disk as anything but software.
Eh? The contents of EEPROMs are software just as much as the contents of
CD-ROMs and hard disks. They are just different media for storing
digital information.
So if EEPROMs contain software, why "don't [you] get to distribute any
drivers"? I don't understand.
> >> Without either of those, it does not operate. This is a dependency.
> > But then ICQ clients "depend" on non-free ICQ servers...
>
> Which might be software or hardware or undistributed or all sorts of
> things.
The ICQ server isn't distributed in Debian, so why aren't the clients in
contrib?
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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