FSFLA: Linux kernel is "open core"

The question is if we have/want to accept that as a fact of life, or if we might be able to change it in the future.

At least some versions of the microcode for the Radeon Command Processor (commonly abbreviated as CP) have certainly had bugs that could probably be fixed easily if the source code and toolchain for it was available. Clearly this is not providing the freedoms we've come to expect from free software such as the Linux kernel when it should be technically feasible to provide it. (Note that I don't mean to belittle in any way AMD's very commendable efforts providing documentation and free code, just pointing out there's still more that could be done)

I share doubts with many in this thread about whether the effort described in the article is the right approach, but although unfortunately I don't know what the best approach would be, I can't help feeling that not putting any pressure on vendors to open up this stuff isn't the right answer either.