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Free Circuits FoundationFree Circuits FoundationPosted Aug 2, 2012 12:37 UTC (Thu) by TRauMa (guest, #16483)In reply to: Free Circuits Foundation by dlang Parent article: GNU Linux-libre 3.5-gnu: Free and a half
What I don't get is that you keep talking about the user being able to replace the blob. Replace with what? He can't create a new blob, he can't make changes to the original blob - the only thing he *can* do is replace it with another blob from the vendor.
On a system where this is possible, he can actually be coerced to "upgrade", and there may be other "functionality" baked in that he doesn't want.
On a system where this is not possible, the vendor has no easy way to make the system less free after the fact. Given this, the user is protected better.
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Free Circuits Foundation Posted Aug 2, 2012 13:30 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Reverse-engineered free firmware was developed for the PCI Broadcom 802.11 devices, permitting them to be used for academic research into new wireless protocols. That would have been impossible if the firmware had been in ROM.
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