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OpenBSD ships firmwares, where many/most devices already have a (perhaps bad) version installed already, but where the loaded firmware improves it or makes it u
by IcePic 8y ago
OpenBSD ships firmwares, where many/most devices already have a (perhaps bad) version installed already, but where the loaded firmware improves it or makes it usable at all. This runs on the device, in some cases regardless of if you update the firmware or not. It differs, as far as OpenBSD sees it, from blobs which run on the CPU. If you don't want firmware-driven hardware then just don't buy those network cards (or whatever it is) and don't run fw_update ever and you won't see source-less code other that those of your own choice.
- IcePic 8y agoAlso, OpenBSD does not have as a primary goal to accomplish all the GPL definitions of freedoms.
- auslander 8y agoI was mostly concerned about backdoors. Good point about code baked into and running on devices - hard to kill. GNU fails to detail it. But, today, 2018, can you build a server with 100% open source sw? Including all firmwares, EFI, network cards, CPU microcode, ring -2 intel ME? Is it possible?
- AstralStorm 8y agoSkip Intel, puck only good ARM manufacturers, say Marvell. Still very hard to pull off.