Re: Non-commercial redistributable game data
On 05/19/2010 06:52 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
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. :-(
I am not surprized :)
For example, ALL OpenGL drivers, at least
for contemporary hardware, require proprietary firmware to work at all.
This issue actually isn't new at all ("Linux veterans" may recall the
Adaptec case). It applies to almost all "smart/flexible" add-on/external
devices.
Another important thing: most hardware which "does not
require" firmware
just has this firmware burned into a ROM.
Exactly - I recall times, people were
burning BIOSes to ROMS to upgrade
them ;)
Unfortunately, there are very few devices with genuinely Free
firmware (and
no, some binary-only hex array claiming to be GPL isn't Free,
Depends -
Certainly commented "asm" is better readable but in some
cases "hex arrays" (machine code) are not unlikely to be the real
"source" of firmware.
I've written and maintained such code for embedded systems myself ;)
We have a long way to go… :-(
Yes, ... and Fedora's
double-standards are not helping change the
situation :(
Ralf