On Thursday 18 September 2008, Mike Montour wrote: > On 17-Sep-08, at 10:07 AM, Wolfgang Spraul wrote: > > (regarding firmware updates) > > > ---2 > > The 2nd best option would be that all software on the main CPU is Free > > Software, and other firmwares are not user-upgradeable, do not have to > > be loaded at boot time, and can thus be considered to be part of the > > 'circuit' of that chip, a black box.[...] > > > > ---3 > > The 3rd best option would allow user-upgradeable firmwares, even if > > they were proprietary binary firmwares that would need to be loaded at > > boot time. [...] > > For what it's worth, I would rank your #3 ahead of #2 by a large > margin. It is very important for users to be able to upgrade their > firmware. As long as the firmware blobs are freely re-distributable > and are never executed on the host CPU, then I do not see any way in > which that "#3" situation is worse for me (as a user or as a > developer) than the "#2" case.
Agreed. I can't see how having software permanently burned into the hardware gives greater freedom than having a redistributable closed firmware with an open load method. > For me, this is not just some theoretical issue about free-software > "purity". I purchased a Neo1973 with the original "moko1" GSM > firmware. Under your #2 option, I would have to live with its bugs > (such as the lack of power-saving) forever. Under your "less > desirable" #3 option, I would only have to download a new blob and > drop it into /lib/firmware (or wherever the Linux hotplug code was > expecting to find it). In this particular situation I fortunately am > able to take advantage of option "2.5", which is to send my phone > (across an international border) to Michael Shiloh for a firmware > update. A similar argument can be made with the limitations of the atheros wifi chip. _______________________________________________ devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
