On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 11:32:47AM -0400, Kent Watsen wrote: > There is a discussion on the osol-discuss mailing list this morning where > it's pointed out that OpenBSD source tree has a blob in it: > > http://osdir.com/ml/opensolaris-discuss/2010-05/msg00095.html > > The location of the blob in the tree is here: > > http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/microcode/afb/microcode.h?rev=1.1;content-type=text%2Fplain
>From the linked message: "They're not happy about it, but a firmware blob isn't really any different if it's loaded from disk where the OS can see it vs. baked into a PROM on the card where the OS is unaware of it." There it is in a nutshell. Do you only allow hardware with fixed microcode, or do you allow the kernel to load it from a blob? What are the practical and ideological differences? Practical: microcode can be updated. Otherwise it's the same as burned in microcode. Ideological: non-free microcode is not free, whether it's burned in or uploaded by the OS kernel. Take your gNewSense no-blob Linux distro and put it on any computer you can find and you'll be running with non-free microcode, starting with the CPU. I don't pretend to know all the issues involved here, but I think what I've said above is accurate as far as it goes. You can't turn on a mainstream computer that is free of closed microcode: such computers just don't exist. -- Darrin Chandler | Phoenix BSD User Group | MetaBUG dwchand...@stilyagin.com | http://phxbug.org/ | http://metabug.org/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ | Daemons in the Desert | Global BUG Federation
