> I'm wondering if there is any sense talking to some of these project > members to gain at least an understanding of why certain firmware > can't be freed. Intel comes to mind with the wifi firmware, and CPU > microcode.
Such companies are known to use debunked arguments like FCC regulations for wifi firmware (while Atheros has free drivers with no firmware or free drivers and free firmware for 802.11n devices), varied FUD from Intel [0], or patents [1]. They might also use licensed nonfree software from other vendors that they cannot release or have bad procedures making releasing sources very expensive. Maybe we can get a more useful understanding of these issues. [0] http://www.coreboot.org/images/7/7d/Ward-vandewege-coreboot-talk-20080404-slides.pdf pages 34-38 [1] https://libv.livejournal.com/26635.html > As an aside, how are certain wifi chipsets "FSF blessed"? Is it > because they keep any firmware on non-volatile storage (meaning no > blobs have to be delivered by OS) and not field upgradable, or is it > because they somehow provide sourcecode for the firmware, which > distros are free to compile into "free blobs"? FSF-endorsed wifi cards using the ath9k_htc driver supports free firmware with available source code (which was freed due to ThinkPenguin's sales requiring free firmware and work from an Atheros employee). They also endorse a laptop with a miniPCIe wifi card using the ath9k driver, it has no firmware known to the OS (maybe it's pure hardware, maybe it has some firmware inside).
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