[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Honesty in Debian (was Re: Amendment to GR on GFDL, and the changes to the Social Contract



Hello Sven,

Sorry for the late reponse, but I am currently Off-Line.

Am 2006-02-13 15:54:23, schrieb Sven Luther:

> Like the mips binary which is part of the tg3 (or some other of those) driver
> and uploaded to to the mips core on the card in question ? 
> 
> Does that mean that we will also distribute binary only drivers for broadcom
> wifi chips in main ?

I think, between this two passages are very big differences.

The first one load a BLOB/Firmware into a Hardware which runs
ON the Hardware and not in the OS.

The later one, runs the BLOB/firmware inside the OS, where we
can have influence.

In the last years I have created some Hardware myself and I am
using CPU's 386EX und 486/5x86.  I am using SRAM/NVRAM to store
OS, which is written entirely in ASM.

Now this software ca not run in the hostsystem of the hardware I
have created.  So what now?

Why should I distribute the Sourcecode? - What are your interests?
If someone buy my hardware, he get a userspace tool to upload the
Firmare and run the hardware.  And now it is non-free?

Another hardware is the Maxim/Dallas One-Wire technologie.  I have
recently bought all sensores and put it into a serial line driven
network.  I have coded kernel modules (2.4/2.6) which write into
"/proc/driver/onewire/<serno>" and I controll the One-Wire Hardware
form the OS.  Here we have the influence, whether we provide the
sourcecode or not.  -  main or non-free.

I think, the discusion about Firmware which IS required on some
external hardware only (and does not run in the OS) is beside not
to call it ridiculous.

Note:   I have made Debian-Packages for the Firmware BLOBs of my
        Hardware so $USER can upload it easyly to the Hardware.

And now again:  Why do you want the Source-Code of a perfectly
                working Hardware which you can not modify?

> Friendly,
> 
> Sven Luther

Greetings
    Michelle Konzack
    Systemadministrator
    Tamay Dogan Network
    Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


-- 
Linux-User #280138 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org/
##################### Debian GNU/Linux Consultant #####################
Michelle Konzack   Apt. 917                  ICQ #328449886
                   50, rue de Soultz         MSM LinuxMichi
0033/3/88452356    67100 Strasbourg/France   IRC #Debian (irc.icq.com)



Reply to: