Re: How free is Debian

[Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer@cs.nmsu.edu>]

Shahryar Afifi <shahryarafifi@yahoo.com> writes:

> With respect to all the contributors, developers, hobbyist and users,
> who made GNU/Linux and Debian and all other distributions possible,
> here lies a humble, ignorance and yet curious question.
>
> Are all binaries in the kernel code were writing from scratch? Are
> there any binary blobs in the kernel that it was given to developers?
> If amd64 license is not free, how is it that we have amd64 microcode in
> the debian free? and if they are not the same, are we using the full
> potential of our hardware?
>
> I apologize in advance for my ignorance.
> Thank you.

Typically the binary blobs are not free.  If you get the source for a
package that includes a blob (for instance, amd64-microcode) you'll see
where the blob came from.  In the case of that package, it's all just
binary -- no source code for the microcode.  The LICENCE.amd-ucode file
includes the paragraph:

    You may not reverse engineer, decompile, or disassemble this
    Software or any portion thereof.

So... not free at all.