Re: Libre graphics could become the standard if we push right now
Just to clarify my participation in this thread --
On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 1:34 AM, Alberto Salvia Novella
<es20490446e@gmail.com> wrote:
> Joel Rees:
>>
>> "Modern" CPUs have plenty of spare register space, most of it
>> undocumented. Register space can be used to record something of state,
>> allowing instruction streams to be self-parsing.
>
>
> Anyway I think this falls mostly in the hardware side.
I think you are making an artificial distinction between hardware and
software. That is, you seem to see a bright line where I don't see a
line, and you seem to call some things hardware that I would not.
I still prefer to call ROMmed design elements "firmware", and still
prefer to group firmware with software, making the distinction that
firmware is write-protected by hardware. Other lines of distinction
are generally promoted by salescrews with an axe to grind (proprietary
pseudo-solution to sell).
And the ability to clear the write protection by software makes
firmware infirm, so to speak. Re-writing CPU microcode and BIOS code,
including boot-time drivers and codec definitions, is dangerous, and
shrouding it in secrecy and cryptographic mumbo-jumbo is just the old
sales line of "trust me", which Ken Thompson explained the weakness of
in his classic (and deliberately incomplete) Reflections on Trusting
Trust.
> I liked microcode to
> be libre too,
Sure, microcode should also be free-as-in-freedom. I am definitely not
arguing against that idea.
I'm just saying you seemed to be promoting microcode for something it
can't do, back a ways there.
Your description of microcode as somehow less "executable" and more
"declarative" than something also didn't sit well. (It is both. You
cant separate operation from definition.)
> but I'm postponing that goal for later. As my main goal now is
> software to be libre.
Okay with that, as long as we don't promote the idea of a single
standard solution to graphics.
Monoculture pretty much undoes the advantages of freedom.
> When libre software is the standard, then I will start talking about libre
> hardware.
No problem with your focus on software, although I personally won't
believe we've won much as long as Intel (and now AMD again) and others
hide any kind of code, including the hardware and firmware.
> Have a nice day.
You have a nice day, too.
--
Joel Rees
Be careful when you look at conspiracy.
Arm yourself with knowledge of yourself, as well:
http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/2011/10/conspiracy-theories.html
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