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I agree with you. From a freedom perspective, there's no difference between a) firmware permanently burned into the device ROM during manufacturing b) updateabl
by jabl 6y ago
I agree with you. From a freedom perspective, there's no difference between a) firmware permanently burned into the device ROM during manufacturing b) updateable firmware stored in flash on the device c) firmware stored somewhere else and uploaded to the device by the driver upon initialization.
Taking the stance that it would be even nicer if we had the source for the firmware, and thus option (c) above is evil whereas (a) and (b) are fine, is just inconsistent.
And if one takes the stance that all of (a), (b), and (c) are evil, where do you then draw the line? Should we demand free Verilog (or whatever) sources for all the chips in the system?
- etaioinshrdlu 6y agoI think this is a great explanation. I suspect there's a cognitive dissonance in the open source community because 1) the line between what is hardware and what is software can be fuzzy in the case of firmware and 2) hardware products usually get a free pass to be completely secret in design. Traditionally the open source community hasn't cared about buying proprietary hardware designs. Probably because there was pretty much no other option! Although open source hardware is slowly becoming a thing... it's performance is generally perhaps 10% of the top performing product out there, in any area.