19 ms·

As an EE I love the idea of open firmware. I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics in

As an EE I love the idea of open firmware. I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics inside. It would let me truly understand and modify the items that I purchased. There is definitely a cost to it to the companies, which I fully expect to be passed down to me, but not in the form of a license agreement - in the form of an increase in base price. The problem for companies is multifold. A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. They're also going to worry about IP; certainly I build products that lean on the work from previous projects. I would kind of hate handing that over to potential competitors. But some of that 'hate' depends on the fact that my competitors don't give their firmware code out either. Maybe I would love it if I could see how they implement things. Maybe it would push us all to deliver better things. Another impact - open firmware would definitely change sales models for equipment. I imagine that if I had to start delivering open firmware for designs, I'd need to push some of the software control over product limitations into hardware. That might cost more, but is better anyway. Usually. And I'd try hard to figure out a way to install a 'unverified firmware' hardware flag, maybe an efuse blown in a hard-to-replace component, so that we could know who broke things. But I do like the idea. I want the firmware for my ${everything}.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
> A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. Is that justifiable, though? I bricked a router some time ago messing around with ddwrt. I thought about soldering on a TTL serial adapter, to recover it, but didn't end up getting around to it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think of asking Netgear to replace the 8-year-old product I broke through my actions. I do know at least one person who is reckless with "no questions asked" warranties, and would ask for a refund with a straight face after trying to use a router to reduce spaghetti sauce spattering when he microwaved his dinner, but these people can't be that common... One area where it does seem slightly more justifiable is FCC-certified radio devices. If the transmitter power level is restricted by law, I'd prefer that end users/modifiers of the firmware be considered legally responsible for the consequences of their own actions, but I understand that pragmatically it's a lot easier to ask OEMs to lock down firmware after getting certified in a test lab than to monitor a million end users.
- petsfed 3y ago
  >I do know at least one person who is reckless with "no questions asked" warranties, and would ask for a refund with a straight face after trying to use a router to reduce spaghetti sauce spattering when he microwaved his dinner, but these people can't be that common... There's common, and then there's common-enough-to-be-costly. REI had a notorious lifetime-return policy that they ended relatively recently because of abuse. How common was the abuse? No idea. I don't know many people who would Return Every Item (as the joke went), but it was common enough that there was always some really beat-up climbing shoes at their member garage sales. And anyway, there's (at least) 2 kinds of costly: cost of returns, and cost to reputation when unqualified people brick their device, then tell all their friends that their router/refrigerator/laptop stopped working.
  - jancsika 3y ago
    > I don't know many people who would Return Every Item (as the joke went), but it was common enough that there was always some really beat-up climbing shoes at their member garage sales. I think you chose an idiosyncratic case here. There must be a significant number of their customers who go there to get fully outfitted for a single, relatively short trip. If you depend only on shame to keep most people below the age of, say, 30 from returning a rent check's worth of camping gear after a single use, well... as you stated REI no longer allows that. (IIRC that happened shortly after the 2008 downturn).
    - petsfed 3y ago
      It happened at least after 2013, because I went skiing with a guy who made it a point to return everything he'd ever bought from REI because of a court case he read about. It was a sort of super-boycott. I chose an extreme case, because the cost is clear, and the consequences are very visible. Obviously, a company's peculiar financial situation will determine the acceptable return-and-refund/replace rate. Every company will have a financially acceptable return rate, and will look for easy fixes to keep their actual rate below that. Barring replace/refund for user modifications is a way to lower the refund/replace rate, without actually decreasing the number of items that get returned. There's still a cost to inspecting devices for user modifications, and that cost may in turn lower the acceptable refund/replace rate, but it does mean the product development people have to spend fewer resources eliminating potential sources of failure None of this is to say that I think firmware shouldn't be field editable. Just that barring those sorts of things is low-hanging fruit and (in general) pretty easy to sniff out if the device is just bricked, not permanently damaged. I think manufactures could instead enable firmware updating after cutting a particular trace, to the same effect. Thus, the would-be hacker must knowingly physically damage the product in a way that clearly voids the warranty, and then they're free to modify to their heart's content.
JohnFen 3y ago
> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. I don't think this reasoning makes any sense. The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty. > I would kind of hate handing that over to potential competitors. But you do that the instant that your product ships. I've shipped a lot of firmware in products, and it's very common to find my firmware reverse engineered and available within a month or so of the product being released.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  > I don't think this reasoning makes any sense. The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty. It's still a cost, though. People are still going to file tickets for warranty replacements, it won't be until the company receives the broken item that they'll detect the firmware replacement (if they even can, what if the hardware damage broke the ability to check?), people return items to the store they bought them from where they can't even check... It's honestly a whole mess that will absolutely wind up costing the company money in support and returns. You can argue that it's still worth the cost, but just declaring that altering the firmware voids the warranty doesn't stop people from trying, which costs money.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Yes, it is a cost. I would argue that it's a reasonable cost of doing business, personally, but it is a cost.
- shadowpho 3y ago
  >The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty How can they know/figure it out? (They can't/or it's prohibitively expensive/difficult). >it's very common to find my firmware reverse engineered and available within a month or so of the product being released. Sure, but it's hidden from 99.99% of your user base
  - 3y ago
RobotToaster 3y ago
I imagine there's upstream issues too, with NDA's for hardware interfaces, and obviously proprietary OS like VxWorks, MS ThreadX, etc.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I was about to say that a lot of this is completely ignoring the few network vendors/chip vendors that have completely locked down hardware/chips that you're buying from them and effectively acting like a value added reseller for companies like broadcom.
thomastjeffery 3y ago
What cost? Competition? That isn't definite. Support overhead? I don't buy it. > If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. ...so void the warrantee when flashing 3rd-party firmware. How often, in reality, are people going to fry their hardware? It's not as if 99.99999% of 3rd-party firmware users are writing that firmware themselves! Hardware damage should be expected as an extreme edge case, not a broad looming risk. --- If we are going to put this much effort into speculating cost, we should put equal effort into speculating value. Open firmware is significantly likely to reduce the costs of compatibility and edge-case support. It is also likely to increase the value of the product by making it auditable and maintainable. It also factors out the cost of anti-user-maintenance efforts like DRM. Most importantly, open firmware can stabilize the value of a product, increasing its resale price and delaying price decline. Unfortunately, this is the point that many companies consider negative, because they don't want to compete with themselves.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  What do you mean that isn't definite? I'm very in favor of open firmware, but there have been multiple examples of clones popping up whenever firmware is public and open source.
  - nine_k 3y ago
    Can hardware be protected (and defended in court) if copycats just copy a device wholesale? If they construct a new device but reuse the firmware, it's sort is the point of having open firmware.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      Open-source firmware wouldn't exactly be the same thing as public domain firmware. And even if a product's firmware isn't getting the benefit of copyright protection, the product as a whole can still be protected by patents and trademarks.
- 3y ago
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware How could custom software destroy a phone, a computer, a TV, a printer? > if that's under warranty Just void it.
- wtallis 3y ago
  > How could custom software destroy a phone, a computer, a TV, a printer? The problem with your question is that you replaced the word "firmware" with the word "software" when the distinction between the two is the answer to the question.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    I don't see the problem at all. Firmware is software. I can see how defective software could damage industrial machinery but I'm having trouble imagining how some TV could possibly be damaged by software. Many consumer devices don't even have moving parts.
    - wtallis 3y ago
      You're really not trying hard to think of any possible answers, are you? In most devices over a certain level of complexity, there's firmware involved in thermal management. Messing that up can easily lead to premature failure of the hardware, and in some cases very quick failure. Even for a TV which may not have much of a thermal concern for its processor (though I wouldn't bet on it with today's smart TVs), you can still expect there to be some screen burn-in mitigation.
      - matheusmoreira 3y ago
        > You're really not trying hard to think of any possible answers, are you? I asked a question because I don't know. I assumed you did. I'm trying to learn something.
        3y ago
mrwnmonm 3y ago
What is EE?
- soylentcola 3y ago
  Electrical Engineer, most likely.
  - mrwnmonm 3y ago
    Got it, thanks.
serf 3y ago
>I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics inside. It would let me truly understand and modify the items that I purchased. I had forgotten about that thing with the wiring diagrams; I loved that. That was the only thing that enabled me to repair a 1940s pinball machine that was essentially a relay-driven mechanical computer. Without those prints the machine would have surely been a loss due to the insane complexity and lack of interested/trained people that know how to work on such devices. One wonders now how many lost pieces of equipment that could help to save from the recycling bin nowadays.
AceJohnny2 3y ago
> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, For a recent and popular example of this, look at Hector Martin's experiments in implementing sound for Asahi Linux [1], which led to the destruction of his Macbook speakers and a warranty replacement. (the end result is a good Linux sound driver for that hardware that correctly implements power limiting [2]) [1] Account since deleted but used to be at https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1569595321168334848 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1569595321168334848 if anyone knows an archive [2] https://mas.to/@marcan@treehouse.systems/110122332896112809 https://mas.to/@marcan@treehouse.systems/110122332896112809

LeifCarrotson 3y ago

> A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. Is that justifiable, though? I bricked a router some time ago messing around with ddwrt. I thought about soldering on a TTL serial adapter, to recover it, but didn't end up getting around to it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think of asking Netgear to replace the 8-year-old product I broke through my actions. I do know at least one person who is reckless with "no questions asked" warranties, and would ask for a refund with a straight face after trying to use a router to reduce spaghetti sauce spattering when he microwaved his dinner, but these people can't be that common... One area where it does seem slightly more justifiable is FCC-certified radio devices. If the transmitter power level is restricted by law, I'd prefer that end users/modifiers of the firmware be considered legally responsible for the consequences of their own actions, but I understand that pragmatically it's a lot easier to ask OEMs to lock down firmware after getting certified in a test lab than to monitor a million end users.

petsfed 3y ago
>I do know at least one person who is reckless with "no questions asked" warranties, and would ask for a refund with a straight face after trying to use a router to reduce spaghetti sauce spattering when he microwaved his dinner, but these people can't be that common... There's common, and then there's common-enough-to-be-costly. REI had a notorious lifetime-return policy that they ended relatively recently because of abuse. How common was the abuse? No idea. I don't know many people who would Return Every Item (as the joke went), but it was common enough that there was always some really beat-up climbing shoes at their member garage sales. And anyway, there's (at least) 2 kinds of costly: cost of returns, and cost to reputation when unqualified people brick their device, then tell all their friends that their router/refrigerator/laptop stopped working.
- jancsika 3y ago
  > I don't know many people who would Return Every Item (as the joke went), but it was common enough that there was always some really beat-up climbing shoes at their member garage sales. I think you chose an idiosyncratic case here. There must be a significant number of their customers who go there to get fully outfitted for a single, relatively short trip. If you depend only on shame to keep most people below the age of, say, 30 from returning a rent check's worth of camping gear after a single use, well... as you stated REI no longer allows that. (IIRC that happened shortly after the 2008 downturn).
  - petsfed 3y ago
    It happened at least after 2013, because I went skiing with a guy who made it a point to return everything he'd ever bought from REI because of a court case he read about. It was a sort of super-boycott. I chose an extreme case, because the cost is clear, and the consequences are very visible. Obviously, a company's peculiar financial situation will determine the acceptable return-and-refund/replace rate. Every company will have a financially acceptable return rate, and will look for easy fixes to keep their actual rate below that. Barring replace/refund for user modifications is a way to lower the refund/replace rate, without actually decreasing the number of items that get returned. There's still a cost to inspecting devices for user modifications, and that cost may in turn lower the acceptable refund/replace rate, but it does mean the product development people have to spend fewer resources eliminating potential sources of failure None of this is to say that I think firmware shouldn't be field editable. Just that barring those sorts of things is low-hanging fruit and (in general) pretty easy to sniff out if the device is just bricked, not permanently damaged. I think manufactures could instead enable firmware updating after cutting a particular trace, to the same effect. Thus, the would-be hacker must knowingly physically damage the product in a way that clearly voids the warranty, and then they're free to modify to their heart's content.

JohnFen 3y ago

> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. I don't think this reasoning makes any sense. The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty. > I would kind of hate handing that over to potential competitors. But you do that the instant that your product ships. I've shipped a lot of firmware in products, and it's very common to find my firmware reverse engineered and available within a month or so of the product being released.

crazygringo 3y ago
> I don't think this reasoning makes any sense. The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty. It's still a cost, though. People are still going to file tickets for warranty replacements, it won't be until the company receives the broken item that they'll detect the firmware replacement (if they even can, what if the hardware damage broke the ability to check?), people return items to the store they bought them from where they can't even check... It's honestly a whole mess that will absolutely wind up costing the company money in support and returns. You can argue that it's still worth the cost, but just declaring that altering the firmware voids the warranty doesn't stop people from trying, which costs money.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Yes, it is a cost. I would argue that it's a reasonable cost of doing business, personally, but it is a cost.
shadowpho 3y ago
>The company can just declare that replacing or altering the firmware voids the warranty How can they know/figure it out? (They can't/or it's prohibitively expensive/difficult). >it's very common to find my firmware reverse engineered and available within a month or so of the product being released. Sure, but it's hidden from 99.99% of your user base
- 3y ago

RobotToaster 3y ago

I imagine there's upstream issues too, with NDA's for hardware interfaces, and obviously proprietary OS like VxWorks, MS ThreadX, etc.

pixl97 3y ago
I was about to say that a lot of this is completely ignoring the few network vendors/chip vendors that have completely locked down hardware/chips that you're buying from them and effectively acting like a value added reseller for companies like broadcom.

thomastjeffery 3y ago

What cost? Competition? That isn't definite. Support overhead? I don't buy it. > If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that's under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. ...so void the warrantee when flashing 3rd-party firmware. How often, in reality, are people going to fry their hardware? It's not as if 99.99999% of 3rd-party firmware users are writing that firmware themselves! Hardware damage should be expected as an extreme edge case, not a broad looming risk. --- If we are going to put this much effort into speculating cost, we should put equal effort into speculating value. Open firmware is significantly likely to reduce the costs of compatibility and edge-case support. It is also likely to increase the value of the product by making it auditable and maintainable. It also factors out the cost of anti-user-maintenance efforts like DRM. Most importantly, open firmware can stabilize the value of a product, increasing its resale price and delaying price decline. Unfortunately, this is the point that many companies consider negative, because they don't want to compete with themselves.

mardifoufs 3y ago
What do you mean that isn't definite? I'm very in favor of open firmware, but there have been multiple examples of clones popping up whenever firmware is public and open source.
- nine_k 3y ago
  Can hardware be protected (and defended in court) if copycats just copy a device wholesale? If they construct a new device but reuse the firmware, it's sort is the point of having open firmware.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    Open-source firmware wouldn't exactly be the same thing as public domain firmware. And even if a product's firmware isn't getting the benefit of copyright protection, the product as a whole can still be protected by patents and trademarks.
3y ago

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware How could custom software destroy a phone, a computer, a TV, a printer? > if that's under warranty Just void it.

wtallis 3y ago
> How could custom software destroy a phone, a computer, a TV, a printer? The problem with your question is that you replaced the word "firmware" with the word "software" when the distinction between the two is the answer to the question.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  I don't see the problem at all. Firmware is software. I can see how defective software could damage industrial machinery but I'm having trouble imagining how some TV could possibly be damaged by software. Many consumer devices don't even have moving parts.
  - wtallis 3y ago
    You're really not trying hard to think of any possible answers, are you? In most devices over a certain level of complexity, there's firmware involved in thermal management. Messing that up can easily lead to premature failure of the hardware, and in some cases very quick failure. Even for a TV which may not have much of a thermal concern for its processor (though I wouldn't bet on it with today's smart TVs), you can still expect there to be some screen burn-in mitigation.
    - matheusmoreira 3y ago
      > You're really not trying hard to think of any possible answers, are you? I asked a question because I don't know. I assumed you did. I'm trying to learn something.
      - 3y ago

mrwnmonm 3y ago

What is EE?

soylentcola 3y ago
Electrical Engineer, most likely.
- mrwnmonm 3y ago
  Got it, thanks.

serf 3y ago

>I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics inside. It would let me truly understand and modify the items that I purchased. I had forgotten about that thing with the wiring diagrams; I loved that. That was the only thing that enabled me to repair a 1940s pinball machine that was essentially a relay-driven mechanical computer. Without those prints the machine would have surely been a loss due to the insane complexity and lack of interested/trained people that know how to work on such devices. One wonders now how many lost pieces of equipment that could help to save from the recycling bin nowadays.

AceJohnny2 3y ago

> If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, For a recent and popular example of this, look at Hector Martin's experiments in implementing sound for Asahi Linux [1], which led to the destruction of his Macbook speakers and a warranty replacement. (the end result is a good Linux sound driver for that hardware that correctly implements power limiting [2]) [1] Account since deleted but used to be at https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1569595321168334848 https://twitter.com/marcan42/status/1569595321168334848 if anyone knows an archive [2] https://mas.to/@marcan@treehouse.systems/110122332896112809 https://mas.to/@marcan@treehouse.systems/110122332896112809