New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 [LWN.net]

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 17:27 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 by JoeBuck
Parent article: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

> I don't think that Fedora is completely free of binary blobs in drivers.

If, by "binary blobs", you mean firmware for hardware (that runs on the hardware itself), then yes, Fedora contains non-free code. But under this definition, *all* x86 distros contain non-free code, in the form of CPU microcode.

If, however, you are referring to the likes of the nVidia driver, or the MADWiFi HAL, which are binary blobs that run on the host CPU, then no, Fedora does not contain any binary blobs.

Fedora's policy from day one was that only Free Software will be part of Core. (Or, at the very least, software that has no restrictions on redistribution or use -- hence the lack of MP3 codecs)

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New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 19:40 UTC (Thu) by tgb (guest, #745) [Link]

I believe that they're referring to in-kernel binary "blobs", i.e. where a kernel-tree module passes a chunk of binary data without corresponding source, these modules have been purged.

I don't have a source for this, it's just the way I read the announcement.