On 08/12/14 01:07, Dmitrij D. Czarkoff wrote: > Riley Baird said: >> However, remember that if someone doesn't know much about OpenBSD, they >> will either: a) think that OpenBSD does not contain binary-only firmware >> due to the "Blob-Busters" marketing or b) not know where to look to >> remove it should they wish to > > This information is easily available to anyone interested via online > manual pages for affected drivers. If user is not knowledgable enough > to verify whether his hardware can be used without proprietary firmware, > you are doing misservice.
They can always add it themselves, thus ensuring that they only have the proprietary firmware that they want on their system. > P.S.: how are you going to cope with hardware that already contains > firmware and does not require loading it at initialization time? Or is > this kind of firmware OK according to your definition of free? I can't really do much to stop that. It is not okay with my definition of free, but due to practical concerns I am still using it. When I don't need to, I won't. Look how many bugs - with potential security implications - have been found in the Intel Core 2 microcode: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/79098-intel-core-2-duo-has-nonfixable-bugs-openbsd-founder-alleges
