On Tue, 2008-10-21 at 12:45 +0200, Luca Niccoli wrote: > On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 11:41 AM, Aurelien Jarno <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > raff.debian.org uses a Compaq Smart 5i RAID card. A flash memory is used > > to store the firmware. While the firmware is freely downloadable (as in > > beer) on HP website [1], we don't have the corresponding source code.
This is just getting ludicrous. Can we just keep to the sensible dividing line that code executing on the computer's main CPU, _under_ the operating system (not BIOS / SMI) should be "free" to whatever divined standard. Peripheral hardware isn't designed for you to run arbitrary code on its CPU, and the fact it requires a firmware blob uploading is merely an implementation detail. (GPUs are borderline of course.) Having no source-code for firmware is hardly that different to having a completely open-source driver which does un-told magic by poking un-documented registers in a complex chip. Think Intel graphics before they released documentation for (some of) their chips. -- Peter Clifton Electrical Engineering Division, Engineering Department, University of Cambridge, 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, Cambridge CB3 0FA Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
