Non-commercial redistributable game data

[Kevin Kofler]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> I have to vehemently disagree. What RH has done with the firmware is
> having betrayed the OSS community, by claiming "Firmware is not SW".
> Though it has improved the uneducated user's "experience" this was a
> slap into the face of OSS-developers.

Unfortunately, you'll be surprised by how much stuff actually requires 
proprietary firmware to work. :-( For example, ALL OpenGL drivers, at least 
for contemporary hardware, require proprietary firmware to work at all. That 
Free driver you're using, be it intel, radeon or nouveau, well, it includes 
a proprietary firmware blob. Needless to say, the proprietary drivers also 
include firmware, but there you don't notice it because the whole thing is 
proprietary. No proprietary firmware == no 3D. :-(

Another important thing: most hardware which "does not require" firmware 
just has this firmware burned into a ROM. This means not only it is 
proprietary, but you don't even have any hope of ever replacing it with Free 
Software. Yet, the FSF is recommending many such devices as "not requiring" 
firmware, which is entirely counterproductive. :-(

Unfortunately, there are very few devices with genuinely Free firmware (and 
no, some binary-only hex array claiming to be GPL isn't Free, it isn't even 
legal to distribute under that form in the first place) or genuinely not 
requiring firmware because it's all done on the host CPU (some wireless 
chipsets from Atheros are allegedly in that category, I have no way to 
verify whether that's true); a lot of the devices recommended by the FSF 
just hide the non-Free firmware somewhere (usually in a ROM). :-(

We have a long way to go… :-(

        Kevin Kofler