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The FSF answer to Matthew Garrett's list ...The FSF answer to Matthew Garrett's list ...Posted Jul 12, 2012 20:56 UTC (Thu) by DavidS (subscriber, #84675)In reply to: The FSF answer to Matthew Garrett's list ... by bosyber Parent article: Searching for common ground between Debian and FSF
And since C) is not acceptable, that leaves an all-or-nothing choice where in both cases they have the same rights to existing products: both can update, or neither can update, yes. But, as I said, it might be consistent, but it also is arguably of very limited use in today’s world.Couldn't that be the point the FSF's trying to make? "A firmware that can only be updated at the manufacturer's mercy is worse - for the user - than a firmware that can't be updated at all?" At least one could send the TV back as defect, instead of having to wait for the next "OTA". Which won't fix it anyways.
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The FSF answer to Matthew Garrett's list ... Posted Jul 12, 2012 21:31 UTC (Thu) by bosyber (subscriber, #84963) [Link]
Yes, I do expect it is. And I see value in that message. Keeping that point in mind is very important as an outlook of where we want to go.
But it seems also clear that people might not like it (and thus work against it instead of heeding it) and/or think that a different approach will work better as a way to actually get there; especially as a solution until we eventually, hopefully, end up there.
The FSF answer to Matthew Garrett's list ... Posted Jul 12, 2012 22:27 UTC (Thu) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the issue is that the manufacturer usually doesn't have the power to update the firmware without the user doing something to approve it.
If you are talking about something like a TV where everything is fed from the manufacturer over the air, you really aren't talking 'firmware' you are talking about the complete OS of your system.
the idea that a Wifi card is somehow 'better' if you would have to send it back to the vendor to upgrade the firmware rather than moving to a new linux kernel driver version that uploads a different binary blob to the wifi card is where people get upset.
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