Resolved: firmware is not software [LWN.net]

Resolved: firmware is not software

Posted Sep 3, 2006 9:53 UTC (Sun) by renox (guest, #23785)
In reply to: Resolved: firmware is not software by ekj
Parent article: Resolved: firmware is not software

I think that you'd better consider the use of these data:
- firmware is data for external devices: it has zero influence on the host CPU, devices without firmware (firmware in ROM) or devices with closed-source firmware are 'identical': in both cases you cannot modify the device. So IMHO both should be treated the same and accepted.

- data for you host CPU must be also Free: otherwise your program is not truly "Free": Quake is not Free: Quake's engine is Free.

- if you only provide a bitmap for a vector-based image, there is a huge loss of information: so saying that the bitmap is "Free" is quite misleading IMHO: this is not the 'preferred form' if you wanted to modify the image.

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