Måns Rullgård <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Brian Thomas Sniffen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> Anthony DeRobertis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> >>> Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: >>>> That's not software. That's firmware, at best -- you can look at it >>>> as software, but then you don't get to distribute any drivers. It is >>>> also internally consistent to think of chips as hardware and >>>> distribute drivers appropriately. It is never consistent to think of >>>> files on disk as anything but software. >>> >>> Hmmm, I have a CF card. Upon it are files, and in every meaningful way >>> it is a disk. Therefor, that data is software. >>> >>> Yet, CF is actually chips --- often the same chips as used to hold >>> firmware distributed with hardware. Thus, it's all hardware. >> >> Sure. It's on a medium for software exchange, thus it's software. If >> it were an integral component of a device, it'd be hardware. > > If it is glued to the socket, does it become hardware?
Is what hardware? The card always was: a physical device which happened to be a medium for software exchange. The bits on the card? I figure they're software as much as the bits on my hard drive are; it's essentially glued into the case. >> I've never been confused when looking at such things; the closest >> case I've found to confusing is the MP3 player, which has its OS on >> disk. I'm inclined to say that it's software to the MP3 player, an >> architecture which Debian does not support. It's hardware, a drive, >> to the (Intel?) Debian-supported PC to which it's connected. > > Why is this different from the SCSI controller board, whose CPU (and > related components) is also an architecture not supported by Debian? > Does it matter whether it connects to the PC by the PCI bus directly, > or over USB? No; how is such a controller board handled in Debian today? Does it have a driver on disk? Firmware loaded from disk? My poor understanding, to which I would appreciate correction, is that we ship drivers in the kernel, and the firmware is somewhere in the hardware I bought from Dell. So Debian's shipping free software, which depends only on hardware with a clean interface. That's no problem, is it? -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]