An interesting article in FS Daily, closely related to the goals of gNewSense:
http://www.fsdaily.com/stop-blob A couple of quotes, this one I believe from The de Raadt: ----------------- There are always at least a few efforts in the project to get more documentation out of vendors. But some vendors are still incredibly resistant. We often run into vendors who have signed NDA agreements with Linux developers, who will then happily write a Linux driver filled with magic numbers, which only one developer in the world understands. Having signed the NDA ensured that Linux got a working driver, sure, but the internals are indistinguishable from magic. It cannot be fixed by anyone else, because it is full of secrets. It is a source code version of a blob. There are many reasons why vendors will not give information out. I believe that all their reasons are a lie to the customer. I can get nearly complete data books for the parts that are in my car, and I should be able to get them for the parts in my computer. ----------------- and ----------------- ... as far as I think it's good that the attention of general open source public has been, hopefully, turned to the the problem named blob (and I think it's better late than never), stating more or less officially that the problem exists and is "harmful and undesirable" will not make it disappear. So, what are you -- the community -- going to do about it? ----------------- gNewSense is doing something about it - it's taking the blobs out. A good thing, too! :-) br Carsten -- http://www.modspil.dk/ _______________________________________________ gNewSense-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users
