Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nathanael Nerode) writes:
Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
^^
This is wrong. Glenn Maynard?
If it comes down to "the driver, on its own, would not be acceptable for
main because it is not functional; but as a practical matter, w
Bruce Perens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Certainly there are AVR and ARM chips that do glue-less downloading from
> serial FLASH chips at boot time. Atmel sells them, among others.
> Reprogramming of the FLASH is done via JPEG and not under the embedded
> processor's control.
Bruce, as far as
Marco d'Itri wrote:
The reason for this is not only the additional cost of the flash chip,
but also that (good) devices which use flash need to be more complex:
you would have to add a programming device, possibly a dual power supply
to drive it and you would need anyway some intelligent enough cod
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 04:09:04AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> Steve McIntyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > Depends on what you mean by a "good hardware design". For example, a
> > lot of the USB dongles becoming common would be significantly bigger
> > and/or more expensive if they had
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 09:07:55AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> >I'm going to disagree (violently) here. FLASH costs money, which drives
> >up costs to consumers directly.
> >
> Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the processors come with it on board whether
> you want it or not, ma
On Mon, Dec 13, 2004 at 10:37:57AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 11:39:30PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > And 4. They're not allowed to by regulations, eg wireless hardware
> > whose firmware cannot be distributed by FCC rule.
>
> I'm pretty sure that FUD got killed las
On Sun, 2004-12-12 at 17:37, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 11:39:30PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > [..]
> > > There are a number of reasons that a device's firmware won't generally
> > > be opened to us:
> > >
On Sunday 12 Dec 2004 00:43, Bruce Perens wrote:
> 1. The manufacturer's concerns regarding the proprietary nature of
> information about their device that is below the bus.
> 2. The fact that misprogramming the device at that level can damage the
> hardware.
> 3. They aren't going to want to supp
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 02:30:51PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> Op za, 11-12-2004 te 20:12 -0500, schreef Glenn Maynard:
> > On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > > What about the rest of the driver? I think that if you remove the BLOB,
> > > it's Free Software. It t
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 11:39:30PM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> [..]
> > There are a number of reasons that a device's firmware won't generally
> > be opened to us:
> >
> > 1. The manufacturer's concerns regarding the proprietary n
Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 08:53:32AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
>> >"contrib" exists for software which is free but fails SC#1, "we will never
>> >make the system depend on an item of non-free software". Moving something
>> >from contrib to main that does
On Dec 12, Bruce Perens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What about the rest of the driver? I think that if you remove the BLOB,
> it's Free Software. It talks to a bus interface, which is a natural
> demarcation between our Free Software and the proprietary hardware
> design. It loads an arbitrary
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 08:53:32AM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> >"contrib" exists for software which is free but fails SC#1, "we will never
> >make the system depend on an item of non-free software". Moving something
> >from contrib to main that does, in fact, depend on such an item is a pretty
>
Wouter Verhelst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Op za, 11-12-2004 te 20:12 -0500, schreef Glenn Maynard:
>> On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
>> > What about the rest of the driver? I think that if you remove the BLOB,
>> > it's Free Software. It talks to a bus interface
Op za, 11-12-2004 te 20:12 -0500, schreef Glenn Maynard:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> > What about the rest of the driver? I think that if you remove the BLOB,
> > it's Free Software. It talks to a bus interface, which is a natural
> > demarcation between our
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Nathanael Nerode) writes:
> Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>>If it comes down to "the driver, on its own, would not be acceptable for
>>main because it is not functional; but as a practical matter, we allow
>>it aggregated with the rest of the kernel because splitting individual
>>
Hamish Moffatt wrote:
And 4. They're not allowed to by regulations, eg wireless hardware
whose firmware cannot be distributed by FCC rule.
It's not at all clear to me that the type-approval process depends on
security by obscurity in the firmware. Some manufacturers may think it
does, but I ha
Glenn Maynard wrote:
"contrib" exists for software which is free but fails SC#1, "we will never
make the system depend on an item of non-free software". Moving something
from contrib to main that does, in fact, depend on such an item is a pretty
basic violation of Debian's principles.
It's not
Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
>If it comes down to "the driver, on its own, would not be acceptable for
>main because it is not functional; but as a practical matter, we allow
>it aggregated with the rest of the kernel because splitting individual
>drivers into contrib is a pain for everyone involved
On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
[..]
> There are a number of reasons that a device's firmware won't generally
> be opened to us:
>
> 1. The manufacturer's concerns regarding the proprietary nature of
> information about their device that is below the bus.
> 2. The f
On Sun, Dec 12, 2004 at 04:09:04AM +0100, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> Is a bit of flash or rom that much bigger than ram? Isn't most of the
> space in the dongle air or filling material?
Space is space on the board (not to mention the complexity of the board)
as well as three dimenisonal space.
Glenn Maynard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 05:52:36PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
>> In the case of a device driver, that dependency would still be there if
>> the firmware was in ROM. Which would put pretty much all of our device
>> drivers, X (talks to VESA code), APM a
Steve McIntyre <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Bruce Perens wrote:
>>
>>A good hardware design would put this code in FLASH on the board.
>
> Depends on what you mean by a "good hardware design". For example, a
> lot of the USB dongles becoming common would be significantly bigger
> and/or more expe
Bruce Perens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Glenn Maynard wrote:
>
>>It's free, but it has a non-optional dependency on non-free software, which
>>means contrib, not main.
>>
> In the case of a device driver, that dependency would still be there
> if the firmware was in ROM. Which would put pretty
Bruce Perens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Is a driver that loads a BLOB Free Software? The problem is
> connected with distribution. The BLOB is unquestionably software. It
> runs below the bus,
Yes, I would agree that a non software blob is so unlikely that we can
rule it out. If it is non-soft
On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 05:52:36PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> In the case of a device driver, that dependency would still be there if
> the firmware was in ROM. Which would put pretty much all of our device
> drivers, X (talks to VESA code), APM and ACPI (talks to BIOS), and so
> on, in contri
Glenn Maynard wrote:
It's free, but it has a non-optional dependency on non-free software, which
means contrib, not main.
In the case of a device driver, that dependency would still be there if
the firmware was in ROM. Which would put pretty much all of our device
drivers, X (talks to VESA code),
On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 04:43:48PM -0800, Bruce Perens wrote:
> What about the rest of the driver? I think that if you remove the BLOB,
> it's Free Software. It talks to a bus interface, which is a natural
> demarcation between our Free Software and the proprietary hardware
> design. It loads an
Bruce Perens wrote:
>
>A good hardware design would put this code in FLASH on the board.
Depends on what you mean by a "good hardware design". For example, a
lot of the USB dongles becoming common would be significantly bigger
and/or more expensive if they had to have sufficient space on-board
for
Bruce Perens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is a driver that loads a BLOB Free Software? The problem is connected
> with distribution. The BLOB is unquestionably software. It runs below
> the bus, which is our /usual /demarcation between Free Software and the
> rest of the system, but it starts li
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