Lesson for Broadcom [LWN.net]

Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 9, 2009 21:39 UTC (Fri) by proski (subscriber, #104)
Parent article: Open source firmware for Broadcom wireless adapters

If you don't open the code for your driver, somebody will reverse engineer not only the driver, but also the firmware.

I just cannot imagine anyone reverse engineering Intel firmware. It's not interesting because it doesn't help improve the driver. Sure, somebody might hack the existing firmware for some purposes, but reimplementing it completely would be too much work.

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Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 9, 2009 22:06 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

The problem with Broadcom wasn't that it wasn't open, but that they disallowed redistribution. The Intel firmware is proprietary, but they allow you to copy it around, so the driver can just use it no problem.

With Broadcom, you always had to download the firmware after installing the driver, which was a real bitch when your wireless was your only way to get online in the first place.

Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 9, 2009 23:36 UTC (Fri) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

> If you don't open the code for your driver, somebody will reverse engineer not only the driver, but also the firmware.

Well, note that the reverse engineered broadcom stuff really is a pain in the ass. It has a lot of issues and there are only a few cards where it works at 100% performance on.

I really hope Broadcom will release the driver in the near future, so we can merge their PHY code into b43. That would make Broadcom devices one of the best Linux WLAN devices available. Currently it's probably almost the worst choice to buy a Broadcom card...

Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 11, 2009 17:28 UTC (Sun) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]

Granted, for me, at first, it was problematic on my BCM4318 card, but I've had zero problems with it in at least the last 6 months. So, I'd say that it explicitly isn't "a pain in the ass" for at least my hardware.

Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 11, 2009 19:11 UTC (Sun) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

> it was problematic on my BCM4318 card, but I've had zero problems with it in at least the last 6 months.

Yeah, 4318 more or less works now. I'm going to start using a 4318 for my main AP, soon.
But the 4318 still doesn't work as good with b43 as with the binary driver. It also depends a bit on the antennae and stuff, but it's always worse than the original driver. And it probably won't ever become as good as the original stuff.
The problem is two things: I don't have the $50k measureing equipment to debug this and we don't know what most of the PHY registers do. So even if I know what was wrong, it would be basically impossible to fix it.

But there's a lot of hardware that's not supported at all. For instance none of the LowPower-PHY and N-PHY devices are supported, yet. These devices basically are 95% of the broadcom devices sold in notebooks today.
The team is working on these devices, but it will take another few months (at least) until this gets usable.

So yeah. It's probably not-so-much pain in the ass, if you have a device older than say 1.5 or 2 years. But if you buy a new device today, you're screwed.

So I really hope Broadcom will get the clue some day... .
Hey, and you don't even have to release the firmware sources; just the driver sources! We already worked that out for you, Broadcom. Aren't we nice guys? :P

Lesson for Broadcom

Posted Jan 14, 2009 20:56 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

> If you don't open the code for your driver, somebody will reverse engineer [...]

Actually, it's not as GP said just "somebody". As your message attests it's a few good individuals ready to spend their time for the benefit of others. We cannot thank you enough. Keep it up!