Misunderstanding of embedded system designers [LWN.net]

Misunderstanding of embedded system designers

Posted Jan 18, 2006 7:27 UTC (Wed) by opennw (guest, #29001)
In reply to: Misunderstanding of embedded system designers by karim
Parent article: GPLv3: a first look

Hi Karim,

> Clearly the FSF once again fails to understand the realities of
> embedded system designers.

I would consider that Richard feels particularly strongly about embedded devices, since the original catalyst for the GNU project was a printer for which he couldn't get free source:

http://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html

> What it will do though is:
> a) require those engineers to use proprietary software, which [...]
> can put the user at risk.
> b) alianate those engineers from the free software community

Exactly, but you make it sound like it's a bad thing. "Sorry, our insecure DRM-using product was late because we couldn't find engineers to work on it".

Meanwhile a GPLv3 non-DRM product takes the market.

Mitch.

(Log in to post comments)

Misunderstanding of embedded system designers

Posted Jan 18, 2006 16:34 UTC (Wed) by karim (subscriber, #114) [Link]

I would love to be able to post a private exchange I had
with Richard a few years back, but it's private, so I
won't. But it does clearly demonstrate the inverse of
your first statement.

Frankly, and again I can't go into too much detail, it
looks pretty clear to me that the FSF's realization that
embedded systems are an issue is only recent, and that
there hasn't been as much contact between their efforts
and a community of embedded system developers (as opposed
to their involvement in many efforts which have to do
with workstations and servers) -- yes, I'm aware GCC has
been cross-compiling for a while, but that's different
than having the actual software run on the gizmo ...

Karim

Misunderstanding of embedded system designers

Posted Jan 19, 2006 9:16 UTC (Thu) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]

Actually, I've always thought the "control program" of that printer refers to it's drivers or some other program used on the computer side, not some embedded code in the printer. I could be wrong of course.