Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)

Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)

Posted Mar 6, 2007 13:46 UTC (Tue) by eru (subscriber, #2753)
In reply to: Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch) by khim
Parent article: Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)

To see how the difference is minimal consider "optimized" firmware is DVD-ROM which sees DVD-Video disk and immediately switches to 1x speed (since you know, you don't need anything more for DVD-Video) and also refuses to work with DVDs from wrong region [...]

Yes, that is unpleasant and user-hostile, but same kinds of restrictions can (and have been) implemented purely in hardware. (Example: consumer camcorders sold in Europe usually lack a video input socket even when similar models sold elsewhere have it, due to an obsolete protectionist customs rule). I'm not sure what the FSF can do here except educate people to boycot such crap devices. The DVD-ROM makers are unlikely to ever support reprogramming the devices.

On the other hand, general-purpose computers are meant to be reprogrammed, so it is important to ensure that stays fully possible. And I think it is a more winnable fight.

And also it does not make it Ok to shove everything to separate device (load this 64MB blog with god-knows-what to our network card and you can use 10KB 100% free driver - happy now?).

Yes, if the network card works. It does not make much difference if the 64Mb blob is in the device EPROM, or loaded into the device by the OS at boot time, provided the blob is available to all OS writers and can be freely distributed with the OS. (Obviously you would not want to use such a card in an embedded device, but on modern desktops and servers 64Mb is peanuts).

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