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Educated guessEducated guessPosted Dec 16, 2005 14:20 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)In reply to: Educated guess by man_ls Parent article: Quanta Building MIT's $100 Laptops (eWeek)
Essintionally correct. Just one change: noone ever goes via "different hardware for different countries" route- unless difference in frequency is so big they need to redesign high-frequency part (like GSM 1800 vs GSM 1900). But if adapter is not extremally cheap they just put flash on card and store firmware there - so no need to keep firmware in driver. What I can not uderstood is why this is such a big deal. Non-free firmware is always in your system: in your WiFi card, in your CD-ROM, in your HDD, etc. And it's not a big deal for Debian creators. Why is it such a big deal if it's on CD in and not on chip then ?
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Educated guess Posted Dec 16, 2005 17:41 UTC (Fri) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link] Distribution, obviously. Debian doesn't distribute the firmware in your HDD or DVD drive, but it does have to distribute non-free binary blobs.
Educated guess Posted Dec 17, 2005 12:51 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Yeah, it is copyrighted material: we would be at the mercy of the vendor, who might limit distribution if it wanted e.g. to sell new wireless adapters at any point in the future.
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