OpenBSD Activism Shows Drivers Can Be Freed

grey writes "The Age has a story up about how the OpenBSD community has been contacting wireless chipset vendors to license their firmware binaries under terms that would allow for free redistribution. This is important, because even with existing GPL and BSD licensed drivers for these chipsets, the drivers don't function without first loading onerously licensed firmware binaries which can only be acquired from the vendor, not shipped by an OSS provider." (Read more, below.)

grey continues "This means that currently, these wireless NIC's don't work out of the box on OSS install or boot media. In just the first 4 days, hundreds of users wrote and called vendors, and already 2 vendors freed their firmware, and several others are in discussions with Theo de Raadt about taking similar steps.

We need your help! TI has still not responded at all. You can call or write to Bill Carney, - Director of Business Development of TI's WNBU to add to the approximately 400 well written messages the OpenBSD community has already sent to TI. We hope that you'll help, and if you do please keep messages polite and to the point. Please remember, we are not asking for the vendors to open source their firmware under the GPL or BSD licenses (though we wouldn't complain if they did). Instead, ask if they would simply email Theo to open discussions on licensing their firmware binaries under terms that allow for free redistribution. If changed, these firmware binaries would then be able to be included with OSS software and function with existing BSD and GPL licensed device drivers from the start.

You can find other contacts for target vendors here, here, here, and here, and it can't hurt to sign this petition. These changes aide all OSS efforts, not just OpenBSD. As you can see from the OpenBSD community's results already, contacting these vendors really does make a difference. We're sure that with the numbers of OSS minded readers in the Slashdot community you can really help with the heavy lifting where fewer numbers of BSD users have already begun to succeed, and all Open Source Software users will benefit."

Comments

If you love your driver

[Anonymous Coward]

You must set it free.

Re:If you love your driver

[Anonymous Coward]

Join us now and share the firmware...

Re:If you love your driver

[mav[LAG]]

If it comes back to you, it's yours :)

Bahh

[Anonymous Coward]

Bahh. What about when we have cases of driver hooks being yanked from the kernel simly because of inflated egos? (I.e. PWC/PWCX)

Re:Bahh

[erikharrison]

Then you have a seperate issue, with a seperate OS, with a seperate developer, with a different kind of hardware.

PWC hooks in the Linux kernel were hooks that were removed as part of a standard kernel policy, after the driver had fallen under the radar for some time, and that hook was specifically designed to extend the capabilities of working hardware in a way which was legally fishy.

This is the issue of going to a vendor for the licence to redistribute firmware which already has a generic kernel hook for being loaded and will not initialize with said firmware.

Or are you just being crabby?

Re:Bahh

[ComputerSlicer23]

Oddly enough, what this is doing, is precisely the way that the PWC/PWCX should be handled. He could have easily started shipping a module that was compiled out of tree, or as a patch, then no GPL violations happened (if you compile your own and don't distribute, there's literally nothing that is illegal you can do, it's only at the point that you distribute binaries that you get into trouble). He could have designed the other module to merely hook into it if it was loaded as opposed to designing it to require a function pointer. That was where it all went so badly wrong. If the binary only module was loaded inplace of the GPL'ed version it would have been fine. The problem was that the GPL'ed one was runtime linking to non-GPL'ed code. The code he was putting into the binary only version was clearly developed independently of Linux in the same fashion that the NVidia driver was (it was used in a different OS first, and it used essetially the same interface to the kernel as userspace does, thus passing Linus's criteria for not being a derived work).

The problem was that there was a hook there that had the sole purpose of explicitly violating the GPL. Here, the firmware isn't linking with the GPL'ed code. So it's all good. This is uploading firmware from userspace via the kernel. Requiring it to be GPL'ed is like requiring that the files I read and write be GPL'ed because they passed thru the kernel.

The firmware loading is there to resolve several pseudo GPL violations (I believe Adaptec has long strings of stuff that is a binary code that gets loaded into the firmware that people claim "we should have the source"). I've always held the believe that that code is not linking with the GPL'ed code, it is merely data as far as the kernel is concerned (you don't have to GPL the constants you use in drivers). While the firmware is intersting and it's plausible that OSS could improve it, it just saves the costs of burning a ROM in case there are bugs that have to be fixed.

This all came up not that long ago and was a possibly blocking problem with the next debian release, but they choose to overlook the problem. The firmware loading is clever because it solves several problems, and is more flexible, and moves the problem outside of the kernel, and turns it into a data problem, not a code problem.

Kirby

Re:Bahh

[DragonHawk]

"Requiring it to be GPL'ed is like requiring that the files I read and write be GPL'ed because they passed thru the kernel."

Don't give RMS any ideas.

(I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I actually think the concept of copyleft is a Good Thing. But I take the shot when I see it.)

Re:Bahh

[rcast]

Well in the case of pwc/pwcx it seemed to help, since there is now an opensourced driver which does handel the decompression: http://www.saillard.org/pwc/

Re:Bahh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you take the pwc/pwcx case as example don forget to mention that a new pwc module is heading back in, one without the pwcx module and a much cleaner solution. Download it at http://www.saillard.org/pwc/ and testdrive it.

If the maintainersc of the kernel had ignored the problem the (broken) pwcx solution had continued. Broken you ask? Yes broken there where many diffulculties with that module. I had them all, long live a clean solution! So all in all there where a lot of inflated ego's; (the driver maintainer and the flamers, not the kernel maintainers) who prefer a broken solution the maintainer insisted to keep (my way or the highway) and a lot of stupid ignorant people because they are too afraid to cut knots.

Re:Bahh

[CoolVibe]

A little bit offtopic to this thread, but I feel I need to say it anyway:

I have to say that the NVIDIA guys are way more relaxed than say intel or broadcom. I'll give you an example: I contribute to the DragonFlyBSD project. NVIDIA found out that I have been porting the FreeBSD X11 NVIDIA driver to DFBSD. They contacted me, and after some pleasant communication, they sent me a prerelease driver for me to port. But that just started things rolling, because I passed on the contact details to Joerg Sonneberger, and he managed to get the nvidia ethernet binary object relicensed so it could be included in our base install.

This just shows that it can be done.

Re:Bahh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the NVNet driver binary-only in the first place? It's just a frigging Ethernet chip...

Re:Bahh

[Anonymous Coward]

It is strange isn't? Claims of "IP" protection hardly apply because as you note, it's just an Ethernet controller. It doesn't do anything hundreds of other very well documented chips do. It isn't like you can retune it to interfere with emergancy communications, and I doubt ATi are planning on making their own ethernet controller and want a peak at nVidia's.

Anyway the real question is why the hell did nVidia design and build yet another ethernet controller instead of just licensing a mask from one of the other manufacturers? Was the idea of using a National Semi or Realtek core really that bad that they spent thousands on designing and fabbing a new core? It's very silly.

Re:Bahh

[wojci2]

By the way, a kind person forked the pwc/pwcx driver.

From the README: "Note 2: With this driver, you don't need the binary module pwcx.ko. The module pwc.ko contains all code to support you webcam in full resolution. If you found big table in the driver, it's not a binary code, but some table to use it to transform data from your webcam to an image in YUV format."

http://www.saillard.org/pwc/

Why NOT?

[TexasDex]

Really. I never understood the reason for such restrictive licenses on drivers. I could distribute the drivers far and wide, but without buying the company's hardware (read: paying them money) they are really really useless.

So why do companies have a problem with free driver distribution?

Re:Why NOT?

[MBCook]

Here is my guess, as always, IANALBIPOOSD (IANAL but I play one on /.).

Legal stuff always tries to reserve as many rights as possible for the company, so when they came up with the license for the drivers they came up with a license that gave almost no rights to people (as licenses usually seem to do). And that's the way it's been for a long time because, untill now, no one needed that ability. I mean other than with OSS (IE in the Windows, DOS, or Mac worlds) what reasons would anyone have for wanting to be able to distribute a tiny part of a driver (the firmware) without the rest of the driver for free? The only times I ever saw drivers given out (other than with hardware) was on CDs that game with magazines (so you could get the lastest that way) but then they include the full driver anyway.

Basically, no one cared before now, so there was no reason to give it to people. Now people want it, and I see no reason why there shouldn't give it up (it's not like we're asking to have it open sourced or the rights to dissassemble it or anything).

Re:Why NOT?

[Coneasfast]

They don't want you getting a driver from some shady site that put a virus in it, and thus giving their company a bad name (at least for dumb-computer-users).

1) most people should know to download drivers from the computer manufacturer / device manufacturer. and if someone wanted to do that, they could without having the source code, just have to put a virus in the installer or reverse engineer the code.

2) i don't think this is the issue here, look how many drivers are in the BSD/linux source code, has this really become a problem? no. will it ever? probably not.

Re:Why NOT?

[cmowire]

A variety of reasons, and there's probably a bunch more that I'm not aware of:

• Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability
• It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.
• They are selling the same hardware as three different products with only the drivers different.
• You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.
• There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.
• They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.

Re:Why NOT?

[networkBoy]

I think the real concern of the companies is that often drivers contain lots of information about the architecture of the hardware, that if it were to fall into "enemy hands" would compromise valuable IP assets that are likely trade secrete rather than patented.
I know this to be the case where I work.
-nB

Re:Why NOT?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Actually, this is the best method of copyright protection; I think an appropriate name would be the "reverse dongle" approach. The value for you is in the hardware device, which follows traditional economic rules. The software is only for enabling the device - it does nothing else, and nothing else does so. Thus, the software can be licensed freely.

A company who can master this should never have a problem with software piracy. If someone makes a clone of the hardware, that's either a patent infringement (not copyright), and more traceable, or it's legitimate competition. We can only trade software easily because it's trivial to copy. Copiers of the hardware must at least break even.

Re:Why NOT?

[LiquidCoooled]

But thats the whole point. By including the drivers in the operating system distrobution, you can ensure hardware is at least usable at plug in time WITHOUT having to go onto some dodgy site.

Re:Why NOT?

[Apreche]

Let's use nvidia as the example because it is easy. Nvidia as a company has no real opposition to making their drivers open source. In fact, I bet that a lot of people working there want to make the graphics drivers open. But they can't or they will go out of business.

Why is this? Well let's look at the competition, which is ATI. Hardware wise ATI is NVidia's equal. If you look at the big picture ATI vs. NVidia the hardware is equivalent between the two vendors. Sure at any given point in time one of them might have a more powerful chip. But the other always counters with better pricing back and forth until the end of days.

The reason that Nvidia has a slight edge is drivers. In windows the Nvidia drivers are god. Sure, the ATI drivers work, but in terms of stability, number of features and correct functioning of features NVidia 0wnz ATI. Hands down. And in terms of Linux support ATI is a joke . I specifically purchased Nvidia only because of their awesome linux driver.

Now. If Nvidia open sourced its drivers you know what would happen? ATI would look at the code and learn how to make better drivers. Then the ATI driver would be just as good if not better than the NVidia. Linux users wouldn't choose nvidia because of better support because ATI would be a reasonable alternative.

The reason drivers for other things arne't given away are similar. It's not that they care so much about the customer being able to use the hardware. In fact, they want as many people as possible to be able to use their hardware. They keep drivers closed so that they can have one thing that seperates them from the competition.

Re:Why NOT?

[Mr Smidge]

A few reasons:

* Preventing unofficial driver releases, the shortcomings of which may be blamed on the hardware maker by lesser-informed people.

* Some drivers really are quite complicated. Take graphics card drivers, for instance. NVidia are constantly coming up with newer versions that increase performance, as they discover new optimisations and so on.

* The old corporate mentality that one should never divulge any secrets, especially when they're full of complicated information (see previous point) that could be sold for a price to other companies.

* The drivers may imploy legally-encumbered procedures, such as patented algorithms (shudder), or trade secrets, or reveal details of hardware that would normally only be available under NDA.

But of course, the last few of these reasons are a load of shite, and ideally we'd all have openly-documented hardware, and hence nice open-source drivers for everything.

Keep badgering the hardware vendors: something will eventually happen (as shown by this story!).

Re:Why NOT?

[SydShamino]

Dude, note that this is for FIRMWARE, not drivers. Big difference.

Hardware used to do things using discrete transistors, resistors, diodes, etc. These days most of that (and more) can be done better in high-density logic devices. But the "top of the line" high density logic, ASICs, still have too great a startup cost for many companies. Plus, they cannot be field upgraded.

The next best logic, FPGAs, are not hard-coded with the firmware. Instead, they load it from a memory source on the hardware - or they load it from the operating system on boot or plug-in. The advantage of the latter is that you don't have to pay for the EEPROM or flash to store the firmware on board, and updating the firmware is as simple as downloading a new binary to your computer. (Overwriting EEPROM or flash firmware on hardware can be dangerous, as a failure could prevent the hardware from being recognized to try again.)

So, firmware (i.e. code for the hardware) ships with the software driver, but is separate from it. Your next question will be: Why don't they open-source their firmware, too?

And the answer here is simple. They have to pay someone to design that firmware, lay out the PCB, spec in parts and materials, and then provide hardware to build those units. If their firmware is available to all, then someone else can take that code, copy their PCB, and produce the exact same board except with no overhead of R&D. Heck, they could even provide (under the table) vendor and device information so that it looked exactly like the primary company's product, would work with their driver, etc.

Why would any company want to do that? One of the early competitors of my company, 15 years or so ago when we used TTL parts, copied the entire product exactly. Reverse engineered the PCB. Then ran advertisements showing the two boards side-by-side, explaining how they were identical except that theirs cost less because they have no research overhead.

So, of course, my company leveraged its research "overhead" to produce a better, faster product that also happened to not be so easily copied. This resulted in our first ASIC. There is no way that we or most other existing hardware companies would return to the days where anyone can copy their products.

Re:Why NOT?

[technoid_]

Because we all know the competition could never go out and buy the product and get the driver from the included CD, or just download it from the manufacturer's site.

The consumer might as well be considered enemy hands.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as I can see, the parent isn't saying that they should open source the drivers, just that the binaries should be freely distributable. If that's the case, your arguments doesn't apply. :)

Re:Why NOT?

[perlchild]

The excuse most heard in graphics drivers is that having a driver would allow a rival company to reverse engineer the special magic that makes the hardware special. I'm not sure it applies here, but the pointy-haired mentality is known to be aggregative.

Re:Why NOT?

[bob beta]

People talk all the time about getting Operating System ISOs from BitTorrent and other means, where compromised drivers could be included.

Sure, there are security measures that could be taken, but many people are lax about that kind of thing.

The same can be said about non-Free software acquired through dubious or third-party means, and often is.

Re:Why NOT?

[lawpoop]

Also:

• They are using unlicensed code, i.e. code that they shouldn't.

Re:Why NOT?

[amorsen]

This article isn't about drivers. It is about firmware.

Re:Why NOT?

[PitaBred]

I agreed with this until the 4th paragraph. NVidia can't open their drivers because they have code in it licensed from other people whose IP they use. It's that simple. The actual architecture for the driver is relatively easy to discern if you look at their distribution, the only thing that's hidden is the code that actually talks to the board.

These other drivers are hidden because companies have just always done it that way. Why should they change things? It's always worked before. They don't realize that the community will help them greatly if they open things up a bit. It's old-world versus new-world, and it's just taking some time to get old-world to come around.

Re:Why NOT?

[networkBoy]

Because we all know the competition could never go out and buy the product and get the driver from the included CD, or just download it from the manufacturer's site.
I'll bite the flamebait (That or you are ignorant of the way the real world works :p ):
The perception of the companies is that to be in an OSS distribution you must include the *source* of the firmware. A simple binary download does very little to help the competition, a source library, however, tells volumes. Devs tend to use names and structures that "make sense" in the context of the hardware in question. Add to that the specific algorithms being used to program and/or configure the device along with the comments in the source and you have a goldmine of information.

The consumer might as well be considered enemy hands.
You are correct, sir.
-nB

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi!

Yes, well that's the slashbot conspiracy theorist answer.

In reality, most companies pay people to produce drivers. The smart ones realize that drivers are a part of the whole experience and seek to further differentiate their offerings from those of their competitors with good software. When there is money to be made by open sourcing drivers (i.e. when it helps sells hardware in numbers that matter) it will happen.

Until then it is too easy to dismiss the whole open source community as whiny cretins who have no appreciation of the process and who don't spend enough money to matter - like you.

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) most people should know to download drivers from the computer manufacturer / device manufacturer. and if someone wanted to do that, they could without having the source code, just have to put a virus in the installer or reverse engineer the code.

I'm not disagreeing with things here, but that's not always the way people do it, at least with Windows.

I have seen this first hand. The not-very-enlightened of the Windows world, when they "need a driver" (even if the hardware is already working) go to google and usually type "driver [hardware name]" or "find my driver for my sound card".

This then gives them a wonderful list of web sites which are NOT the manufacturer, and have drivers that undoubtedly are of questionable origin. I've even seen them install software (spyware) which even said it wasn't the driver, but if they installed it *it* would find the driver for them. Spyware makers are some sneaky pricks.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, this article is about -licensing- the firmware in such a way that it can be shipped by OSS vendors - NOT about Open Sourcing it (quote: "Please remember, we are not asking for the vendors to open source their firmware under the GPL or BSD licenses"). Stop trying to answer a question no one was asking, you're either making yourself look foolish or intentionally misleading people when you do such things.

Anyone who wanted to reverse engineer the firmware would have just as tough a time doing it _now_ as they would if the firmware was able to be shipped on a knoppix or OpenBSD CD instead of downloading it from a website with an Intel licensing splash page.

You have some worthwhile points and you explain the distinction between drivers and firmware well, but your argument and company's experience is not relevant in this instance. Getting companies like TI and Intel to license their firmware in a way that allows for other vendors to provide it out of the box is just going to help users - other companies which might be helped or hindered by open sourced firmware will be completely unaffected, because the challenge will remain the same as it is now.

Let's take that intellect and argumentative skills and point it at contacts for TI and intel instead of veering off course.

Re:Why NOT?

[Kupek]

I might be missing something in your explanation, but the poster was not calling for the firmware to be open source, but that the license for the binaries be changed so that they can be redistributed (with, say, a Linux distribution).

Re:Why NOT?

[TCM]

A simple binary download does very little to help the competition, a source library, however, tells volumes.

But this is not about source at all! It's not about drivers, it's about firmware binaries which get uploaded by the driver and are never available as source. All they asked was for those binaries to be redistributable, not to open source them.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

You had me at I ANAL BI POO /.
Reason: Don't use so many caps.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

"often drivers contain lots of information about the architecture of the hardware, that if it were to fall into "enemy hands" would compromise valuable IP assets"

Lemme guess - the recuitment dept. think that if anyone saw your source-code, they wouldn't want to work at that company?

Re:Why NOT?

[Bastian]

While I agree that most of those are good reasons, I must say that I think that something is terribly wrong with the legal system if the vendor can be liable for my intentional misuse of their product.

I envision a similar situation in which Detroit gets sued because they are liable for a person's speeding ticket. Only the person had to override some sort of speed limiter device in order to do it.

Re:Why NOT?

[RedLeg]

So why do companies have a problem with free driver distribution?

A: In the case of wireless, the FCC plays a part.

An 802.11 Wireless Card is a software controlled radio, and must be licensed per FCC regs (in the USA, your country's rules might be different). Since the 802.11 PHY operates over several channels within the specified band, it must be able to select and switch between these channels via software, and to adjust its transmit power for optimum performance based on the changes in temperature of the transmitter, and changes in the frequency, among other things.

But different regulatory domains (countries) allow different channels within the bands, meaning a card in the US may be able to operate on a channel in the B band which is not licensed for another country, or vice versa. This is particularly true in the A band, where a whole middle "chunk" is not legal for use in the US.

Bottom line is that in order for the producer to get a license for the radio (and trust me, you do NOT want it to be the case that you, the operator, have to secure that license), he is NOT ALLOWED to expose the controls for power, et al, to the end user.

Now, if the driver / firmware (distinction / similarity discussed elsewhere in the thread) is open source, then by definition the controls in question are exposed to the end user. There would be nothing to prevent an end user from operating his card at a higher than legal power, or outside the legal freqs for the local regulatory domain.

NOW, all that being said, that is not to say that SOME hardware manufacturers haven't tried to do the right thing, and strike a compromise.

The MAD-WiFi Project http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi, (FAQ here) produces an open driver for the cards with Atheros chipsets. The bulk of the code is open, and under a good license. To meet the FCC requirements, they implement the "required to be secret" controls in a binary-only Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), but the rest of the code is open, free for you to read and modify.

And it works. I'm typing this through a Netgear card, running the MAD-WiFi driver (with TKIP encryption, IEEE 802.11i 4-way handshake and authentication handled by wpa_supplicant) on Gentoo Linux.

Credit is due to Sam Lefler and most importantly to Greg Chesson (of Atheros). Yes, it's that Greg Chesson, the same one mentioned of late by Rob Pike in his recent ./ interview.

Note that, AFAICT, all of this happened without Theo de Raadt pimping around or making an ass of himself, as he is want to do. Disclaimer: I lost patience with Theo and TheoBSD a long time ago.

Re:Why NOT?

[minaguib]

Possibly a newbie question:

Why would such firmware be available in the driver to be uploaded to the chipset every time, instead of being copied once to a re-writeable ROM on the hardware somewhere ?

Re:Why NOT?

[sharkey]

While I agree that most of those are good reasons, I must say that I think that something is terribly wrong with the legal system if the vendor can be liable for my intentional misuse of their product.

Lawsuits claiming firearms manufacturers are liable for murderer's actions comes to mind. To quote Steve Dallas: "America: Land of the Lawsuit"!!

Re:Why NOT?

[Kartoch]

An other tricky thing: vendors force the people who want the firmware to go the website of the company and to be registered. For instance, firmware for speedtouch modem (but you can easily give a false address, as no check is performed).

Re:Why NOT?

[Chandon Seldon]

Remember:

Bittorrent is no different than, say, HTTP when it comes to this sort of thing.

If you're bittorrenting down a ISO from, say, the Knoppix official tracker - You know it's fine - same as if you downloaded it by HTTP from the same site.

Now if you're randomly downloading stuff from Hack-My-Computer.com, that's a different issue.

Re:Why NOT?

[chochos]

Two things:
(1)You're talking about drivers. The petition is about the firmware.
(2)Most of the reasons you mention are valid reasons for not opening the firmware source. That is not what is being asked. Just the license. In other words, to get permission from the manufacturers to freely redistribute the firmware BINARY. I don't see how you could exceed FCC restrictions if you can't modify the firmware because you don't have the source.

Re:Why NOT?

[ewhac]

A variety of reasons, and there's probably a bunch more that I'm not aware of:

And most of the ones you cited are complete bunk. To wit:

* Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability

Liability for what, exactly? This bogeyman is often trotted out, but only in the vaguest sense. The only concrete example offered thus far is the potential for lawsuits owing to frivolous patents. Sounds to me, then, like a reason to agitate for patent reform rather than screw your userbase. Argument weak.

* It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.

That's not the fault of the manufacturer, that's the fault of the guy driving the HW out of spec, and the FCC will go after him first. If it's later discovered that the HW itself should have enforced those limits, well, that's a separate discussion. Argument invalid.

* They are selling the same hardware as three different products with only the drivers different.

This has always been a completely bullshit way to differentiate between "products", and anyone who does this should be thumped over the head. Argument invalid.

* You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.

And so also could the vendor. And since all the driver-writing expertise already resides under his roof, he already has all the competetive advantage that he needs to stay ahead. Argument invalid.

* There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.

This is the first valid reason you've offered. However, as an OEM, you really should be thinking much more carefully before agreeing to such terms. You could be shutting yourself off from a lucrative market.

* They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.

Then why weren't you, the vendor, doing this in the first place? Frankly, I'm not interested in compensating for a vendor's lack of business acumen. Argument invalid.

Schwab

Re:Why NOT?

[808140]

Essentially because it's cheaper.

The existance of firmware is nothing new; all those old cards you had had firmware as well, but that firmware was on a flash memory chip on the card, and didn't need to be loaded at boot. But those chips cost money... so, they figured out that you can save a few bucks by not including them and instead loading it everytime.

Incidentally, ROM stands for Read Only Memory, so rewriteable ROM is something of an oxymoron. But I understood what you meant, I'm just letting you know.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG! You're such an asshole! Argument invalid.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, ha ha ha, you used the word "slashbot", hehehe. I get it! That's SOOO clever!

Stupid fuck.

Re:Why NOT?

[SydShamino]

The parent poster used these words:

>> So why do companies have a problem with free driver distribution?

Free, as in speech (or beer). I read it as speech. And, he was talking about drivers, not firmware, as he should have been.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi!

It's a sad phenomenon, and the name is apt.

Cheers,
GNU/Wolfgang

Re:Why NOT?

[LX.onesizebigger]

In economic terms: hardware is rivalrous and excludable, which makes it a private good. Digital information is neither (so trying to pimp it is as silly as selling a fireworks display).

Re:Why NOT?

[Gactaculon]

One of the early competitors of my company, 15 years or so ago when we used TTL parts, copied the entire product exactly. Reverse engineered the PCB. Then ran advertisements showing the two boards side-by-side...

I call BS. PCBs, schematics and the like are protected by copyright law. If your company could legitimately claim that the design was copied, it should have been a simple matter to shut down the "competitor"... reverse engineering is another thing, not resulting in a truly identical product and NOT entailing "no overhead of R&D".

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then ran advertisements showing the two boards side-by-side, explaining how they were identical except that theirs cost less because they have no research overhead.

So, of course, my company leveraged its research "overhead" to produce a better, faster product that also happened to not be so easily copied

*excellent!* The free market drove innovation; bringing cheap, quality parts to consumers. Where was the problem again, exactly? Just imagine if you had left your second product as open as the first. Incremental improvements available far and wide for a good price. I can't wait for free open design hardware to become available.

Re:Why NOT?

[DoXaVG]

And I can buy a 2.4Ghz 10Watt amp from Canada and exceed the TX power on 2.4Ghz restrictions the FCC has in place, but I guess that would be my own damn fault wouldn't it? Oh wait, that's right, it's also my fault that I changed the code on a well written driver to up the output power, or change the frequency cause I'm sick and tired of my phone stomping on my network.

As for the "bits of licensed code in the driver"...um, we're talking about firmware, not drivers (at least not OS level drivers). But maybe you were replying to another poster, not the original post.

--Dox

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

second that. Sadly, there *is* something wrong with the legal system.

by the way - by way of full disclosure, I'm one of the people on the original spam list. I have to say, it was *really* counterproductive to do that. In our case, our legal department was already on the problem from the first polite email.

However, such issues take some while to sort through. It just isn't as simple, as some suggest, to just "decide" to release the driver under another license.

Sending a bunch of spam emails when the problem was already noted and in hand to (as it happened) a group of random people in the company who had nothing to do with the issue just pissed people off and made us look at whether we should shut down all communication with open source groups for fear of getting more email addresses on the spam list. Really not clever...

Re:Why NOT?

[metlin]

Excellent point.

But that's why you have checksums and digital signatures.

Re:Why NOT?

[bn557]

some of the firmwares just provide an API you use to set the broadcast strength. I know the acx100 drivers can violate FCC regulations. It can even cook the card if you run it too long at full strenght.

P

Re:Why NOT?

[Herbmaster]

*excellent!* The free market drove innovation; bringing cheap, quality parts to consumers. Where was the problem again, exactly? Just imagine if you had left your second product as open as the first. Incremental improvements available far and wide for a good price. I can't wait for free open design hardware to become available.

Cheap OR quality, not both. Without any protection for IP, your choices are cheap knock-off with no R&D overhead, or overpriced original with additional R&D overhead to cover the costs of obfuscation the design so as to avoid getting copied.

Re:Why NOT?

[javax]

Lawsuits claiming firearms manufacturers are liable for murderer's actions comes to mind.

thats really strange - what are you supposed to do with firearms if not kill someone???

Re:Why NOT?

[javax]

does it work for you? being clever?

Re:Why NOT?

[RedBear]

Overwriting EEPROM or flash firmware on hardware can be dangerous, as a failure could prevent the hardware from being recognized to try again.

OK, I've never understood this. Why is there no hardware that includes a separate read-only ROM (yes, I know that's redundant) with a backup copy of the original flash ROM, so that it wouldn't be so dangerous to upgrade your computer/card/printer/digital camera? Would this not be a sensible solution to avoid turning all these devices into paperweights during failed firmware upgrades? Sending things back to the manufacturer gets expensive both for the consumer and the manufacturer. Would it not make sense to have a redundant firmware system?

Re:Why NOT?

[ducomputergeek]

Actually his point about getting in trouble with the FCC is technically valid even if you misuse/abuse/modify the equipement. Most devices are supposed to have hardware limitations. Those limitation can be altered.

Offtopic example: Dish model 6000 HD receiver required a new updated module for reformatted HD broadcasts. For what ever the damned reason, they provided a sticker to place over the accecory jack for IR-extenders. For whatever reason, was against FCC regulation to use the new HD module with the IR extender and it said in the book several time the "adheive patch"/(sticker) had to placed over the jack to make it FCC compliant. Why? Beats the hell out of me and our neighbor thats an installer for Dish. For whatever reason too, legally Echostar/Dish could get in trouble for the patch not being there just as much as you could. Again, why the hell that accessory jack had to have a sticker on it (we weren't using it anyway) is beyond me, but the installation booket stressed several times that IT HAD TO BE THERE BECAUSE OF THE FCC.

Now does the FCC really give a shit? Not unless its interfering with something and someone complains. But FCC like any government agency can be really bitchy from time to time.

Re:Why NOT?

[farnz]

Cost. The most expensive part of PCB manufacture is fitting each component in turn; reducing the component count (by not including a ROM) takes off the price of the ROM, the cost of routing tracks to make the ROM work, and the price of fitting the ROM.

The usual way to get the effect you want (which increases costs by the price of adding an extra chunk of flash) is to have enough flash for 2 copies of firmware plus a boot loader. Depending on the amount of flash you need, this raises costs by anything from a few cents to tens of dollars.

The boot loader fits into one or two sectors of flash, and hunts through the flash to find a valid firmware. This can be filesystem-based, or simpler (firmware can start at address x or address y. Image as supplied has first byte all ones. When a new firmware is burnt, this byte is zeroed in the old firmware, and set to 10101010 in the new firmware image. Thus, old firmware has a 0 byte, new firmware (incomplete download) has a 0xff byte, and complete active firmware has an 0xaa byte. More sophisticated boot loaders can then try switching firmware to guarantee a boot).

Re:Why NOT?

[ciph3rBSD]

OpenBSD has just imported a FREE driver for Atheros card reverse engineered without the HAL stuff ;)

Re:Why NOT?

[ciph3rBSD]

OpenBSD has just imported a FREE driver for Atheros card reverse engineered without the HAL stuff ;) ------- CVSROOT: /cvs Module name: src Changes by: reyk@cvs.openbsd.org 2004/11/01 20:01:16 Added files: sys/dev/ic : ar5xxx.c ar5xxx.h ar5210.c ar5210reg.h ar5210var.h Log message: import of a free hal part for the ath driver as a replacement for the binary-only hal module found in FreeBSD and NetBSD. OpenBSD's approach is based on reverse engineering because it is _not_ possible to include a non-free and binary-only piece of software in a 100% free operating system. it still lacks some features found in the "official" hal module but this will be done very soon with a help by a lot of contributors - because it's free. ok deraadt@

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm remembering a Dilbert where Dilbert is trying to get something approved by legal.
The legal bloke says "I cannot approve this desighn because we may get sued by someone for no reason".

Dilbert asks Dogbert "That's true of anything. Is he using silly Logic?"

"Lets see" says Dogbert.

"Approve this or I'll sue you for obstruction of Dogs!!!!!" says Dogbert.

"Uh, OK" Says the legal bloke.

"The thing with silly logic is you can make it work for you" says Dogbert.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you even bother if you're just going to get the quote wrong?

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

And having the driver load the firmware automagically would somehow make this easier, than grabbing the same firmware off the CD?

Re:Why NOT?

[codguy]

[radio static on]Hello RedLeg, are you there??? Come in, Redleg...[radio static off]

OpenBSD (and others) simply want to be able to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD (or other OSS) freely.

The request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests. Again, since you missed it the first time, the request is *not* to open up the firmware like your message suggests.

Maybe the average slashdot reader does not have a long enough attention span to follow such logic through, but this is honestly important not to just OpenBSD, but all OSS in general.

--codguy

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The MAD-WiFi Project http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi, (FAQ here) produces an open driver for the cards with Atheros chipsets. The bulk of the code is open, and under a good license. To meet the FCC requirements, they implement the "required to be secret" controls in a binary-only Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), but the rest of the code is open, free for you to read and modify. And it works. I'm typing this through a Netgear card, running the MAD-WiFi driver (with TKIP encryption, IEEE 802.11i 4-way handshake and authentication handled by wpa_supplicant) on Gentoo Linux."

It does work. Mostly. Except that it seems to crash about 1/3 of the time on resume from APM sleep....Funny that that problem never occurs with the entirely open source 802.11b card drivers I have used in the past.

Re:Why NOT?

[Anonymous Coward]

So why do companies have a problem with free driver distribution?

Sure miffs me too as whomever comes out with 54g drivers in source form for the OS to have native support stands to sell alot of cards. And when I buy the base station I will favor the card's vendor.

Somehow the vendors have been scared into not providing the drivers. Maybe some OS vendor has said they will include driver support if the source is closed.

Re:Why NOT?

[tepples]

And a .torrent file includes a checksum of each piece. Downloading a .torrent from an HTTP site could be man-in-the-middled, but most commercial distributors of operating systems can afford to pay three figures USD a year for SSL, shifting responsibility to Thawte, Geotrust, or another certified root CA.

Re:Why NOT?

[halligas]

Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability
Not true, they are already giving this firmware out with the cards, it is just on a cd and can only be installed from Windows. OBSD is merely asking for the ability to package the firmware with their distro.

It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.
Not true, FCC regs do not apply to the manufacturer, they apply to the user.

There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.
OBSD is not asking for the source to be opened. Read the article again. The binary firmware blob, which is already on the CD (but with a onerous re-distribution license) is what is being discussed here. No one cares what the code in the firmware looks like, we just want to be free to give the blob away.

They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.
Again, read the article, the drivers already exist in OSS. The drivers are no good if you can't load the firmware binary.

No one is asking anyone here to open source any code. We just want these vendors to remove restrictions on redistribution of the BINARY firmware (that they themselves already give away).

Re:Why NOT?

[tepples]

There exist several reasons to use a firearm other than to kill a human being. What about target shooting? What about hunting? What about nonlethal uses of a firearm on people, such as aiming a handgun at an attacker's shoulder to make him drop the gun that he's trying to use lethally, as Holly Hunter demonstrates on a shooting range in the beginning of the movie Copycat ?

Re:Why NOT?

[networkBoy]

my inital point is that many companies perception (mine included) assume that in order to be involved in open source they'd have to open the source for the driver as well as the firmware image. While this may not be the case, it is the perception that counts.
-nB

Re:Why NOT?

[SillyNickName4me]

> What about target shooting?

THat is practise for either hunting or shooting humans. According to soem it is also fun to do.

> What about hunting?

Valid use of firearms. No need for handguns and automatic weapons when hunting tho.

> What about nonlethal uses of a firearm on people, such as aiming a handgun at an attacker's shoulder to make him drop the gun that he's trying to use lethally, as Holly Hunter demonstrates on a shooting range in the beginning of the movie Copycat ?

That would make for threatening to kill with a firearm. The intention of the weapon itself is still to kill, the intention of the user may be to stop soemone else indeed.

You might want to realize however that in a society where firearms are commonplace, an attacker is a lot more likely to use one against you because an attacker is a lot mroe likely to expect you to have one. I prefer fighting an attacker that doesn't have one, and I stand a much betetr channce at having it end good for me also.

Re:Why NOT?

[ewhac]

Actually his point about getting in trouble with the FCC is technically valid even if you misuse/abuse/modify the equipement. Most devices are supposed to have hardware limitations. [ ... ]

In which case, the vendor is already in violation of FCC regs, and is using software to try to obscure that fact.

Frankly, I'm not willing to let the vendor slide on this one. The story of the Therac-25, though considerably more grave, should serve as a lesson to vendors everywhere to never rely solely on software to limit the actions of hardware.

Schwab

Re:Why NOT?

[ckaminski]

So? What's your point? This same firmware can be downloaded from a website freely, all they want is to be able to distribute it with the software driver so that the device can be made useful AT BOOT TIME.

Re:Why NOT?

[file-exists-p]

* Legal counsel decides it's a bad idea because it could expose them to liability

I guess we all agree that clearly exposes how much open-source dudes are less respectfull of IP than corporations.

* It really does expose them to liability. For example, you could exceed FCC restrictions on the ISM bands by programming your card to emit more power than it should on frequencies it's not allowed in the US to be in.

I hear that often, I dont get it. This argument is true as long as we considere that it is harder to de-compile and hack the binary driver than directly hack the source code. In fact, it has to be so much harder that in makes a difference in term of responsability of the hardware manufacturer ? But we know that it is not true.

It would be like saying someone is more responsible for exploits in his products if he gives the code than if he does not. That's total nonsense.

* You could make a linux-based device cheaper than their stand-alone equivelent.

I dont understand this one.

* There are bits of licensed code in the driver that aren't theirs to give out.

The arguments valid for one manufacturer are valid for the others. The point is more that "so many IP are involved, it would take 200 years just to be sure everybody agrees" (same reason as why algorithm patents suck)

* They are using a reference design and the driver contains features unique to their product. If they let the driver out, people will be able to buy the cheaper implementation of the same reference design and get those features.

Decompiling is the key here again.

--
Go Debian!

Re:Why NOT?

[flink]

Some classier mainboards do. A $15 ethernet NIC will not. As the poster below says, it mostly depends on cost.

Salient point:

[Sheetrock]

Why settle for binary only?

Particularly where OpenBSD is concerned, where every inch of the code has been scrutinized for security holes, encouraging the use and distribution of binary-only drivers sounds like a quick way to lose the status of never having a security hole in the installation. There's got to be a hardware manufacturer that's willing to release source (though the hardware might cost a little more).

Re:Salient point:

[gl4ss]

*Why settle for binary only?*

because it's doable and reasonable, and most importantly something that the vendors could agree to.

(they don't really lose anything if they allow the binary versions to be distributed along the os's, all they lose is that people won't dl the files from them directly)

Re:Salient point:

[downbad]

firmware, not drivers. :)

Re:Salient point:

[MBCook]

Besides "trade secrets" and such, there are other good reasons. First of all, another company could take their hard written code, change it a little, and then add some hardware to get a implementation for next to no investment (compared to the origional company).

But another reason that I've heard of is that many of these are software radios to a degree. This means that you can choose the powerlevel and frequencies and such in the firmware. Among other things this would let them change to the .11G standard after shipping "pre-G" gear. The problem with this is that it would let people modify the gear to work in a way that would violate the laws enforced by the FCC. Giving people the ability to do that could get the company in trouble with the FCC or get the product's license pulled or something like that. In other words parts of it can't be user modifyable to get approval. The other option would be to embed that stuff in hardware, but then it can't be changed easily (right now, for example, you could ship the same gear to numerous countries even if they all use different spectrums for 802.11 because you could change which one to use in the driver).

But as another poster pointed out, there is no real benefit to the companies to giving people the source. 99% of what people want (the thing to just work) would be served by a freely distributable driver (that was closed source).

My 0.02

Re:Salient point:

[Anonymous Coward]

Firmware you doofus! FIIIIRRRMMMMWARE!!!!! If you still don't understand, then fucking look it up.

Now, if I could only post this a million more times, maybe you idiots would get it.

Re:Salient point:

[Anonymous Coward]

What is firmware?

I thought we were talking about device drivers here...

Re:Salient point:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your sig is incorrect: it's Yoda who said that, not Dr. Spock...

Re:Salient point:

[Chandon Seldon]

Long term, it would be nice to have source to this stuff, but the people we need to bug are at the FCC - not at the hardware manufacturer.

Until it's legal to distribute the source for Wireless NIC firmware, bugging the hardware manufacturer for it is just being obnoxious.

Reverse engineering it on the other hand - that's fair game.

Re:Salient point:

[Computerguy5]

And not only that, it's MR. Spock in Star Trek, not Dr.. Dr. Spock is a human child psychiatrist. Mr. Spock is a Vulcan science officer, and a damn good one too.

Re:Salient point:

[cbreaker]

And a lot of them already do that, in the form of a built-in Windows driver.

Re:Salient point:

[Anonymous Coward]

Firmware is the software that runs on the device itself, not your computer. It used to be that firmware was always put on a ROM or flash chip, but now it is often uploaded from a file on the hard drive to the device. The driver simply uploads the firmware into the device and then acts like a normal driver. This is not a GPL problem since the firmware updater is basically a specialized cp, and once the firmware is loaded into the hardware the driver acts like any other driver.

Good work.

[dickeya]

I'm a little surprised to see that the OpenBSD community is so actively pursuing this, whereas I hear it as an issue for large linux distributions but don't see much being done. I honestly thought the various BSD-type followers were dwindling. It's great to see them working in an area where all open-source type software could use some work.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

NDA's are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

imo these restrictive licenses are the last frontier for open source software.

you should NEVER sign an NDA to obtain documentation to write drivers, as the linux people REPEATEDLY do. NDA's are not freedom. When you do this you are saying to the companies 'its ok for you to crap on our ideals and beliefs'

binary firmware may be a grey area here, but notably with the sparc issue i really feel the linux people really let a lot of people down by signing the NDA.

Re:NDA's are evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Given an example.

Free distribution = Free

[jmulvey]

Until an open source hardware manufacturer is sprouted, I can't understand why any for-profit company would license the most difficult part of their design for "free distribution".

I mean, if they licensed it for free distribution, what would prevent some half-baked Chinese knock off from mass producing the wireless chipset reference design, burning the for-profit's "free" firmware, and selling for a huge profit?

Please sir, if you'd only give me the keys to the kingdom.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Since they can already download the binaries, what's to keep the knock-off producers from doing it now?

The legitimate manufacturers lose nothing and gain market share by doing this. For a hardware manufacturer, it's a winning proposition.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[cmowire]

You should notice that they are going after the chipset manufacturers, not the card manufacturers.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[temojen]

I mean, if they licensed it for free distribution, what would prevent some half-baked Chinese knock off from mass producing the wireless chipset reference design, burning the for-profit's "free" firmware, and selling for a huge profit?

And this would hurt the chipset manufacturer how? The knock-off company would still have to buy the chips from them. That's why they make reference designs .. so other companies can know how to make knock-offs.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[squiggleslash]

I mean, if they licensed it for free distribution, what would prevent some half-baked Chinese knock off from mass producing the wireless chipset reference design, burning the for-profit's "free" firmware, and selling for a huge profit?

Patents and copyrights? (Patents on the principles of the design, copyrights on those parts of the implementation that are sufficiently creative.)

Re:Free distribution = Free

[Triumph The Insult C]

well, if they would instead keep the firmware on the card, and not require the driver to load it each time, they wouldn't have that problem

however, for some reason, companies want to hand us shitty hardware and a costs savings of just a few $$/unit. when said unit costs $50+, i'd rather pay the extra $$ for better hardware (read, wireless nics + nvram vs. driver-uploaded firmware; good ole AT modem vs winmodem POS)

Re:Free distribution = Free

[yamla]

Ha ha ha!

Oh, you were serious? Come on... China doesn't enforce copyright and patent legislation anything _like_ the U.S. does. Just consider, as a single data point, how many pirated copies of Windows exist over there. I'm constantly bombarded with people from China offering the business I work for dubious copies of sewing machines and sergers that we sell already. They are cheaper because they are 'exactly like' the brand-name machines we buy from legitimate manufacturers, but these are manufactured in grey-market factories. And no, they are NOT from the same factory lines as the brand-name machines, we've checked.

Now, that's not to say that not licensing firmware will help prevent knock-offs. Near as I can tell, it wouldn't help at all as really only the binary is what is important, and that's currently distributed by the legitimate manufacturers anyway.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[squiggleslash]

If China doesn't recognize patents and copyrights, then the whole issue of not GPLing the firmware becomes irrelevent, correct?

Of course, if it comes into the US, all patents and copyrights are enforcable. Any distributor better pay the royalties, or face the legal consequences.

Re:Free distribution = Free

[surprise_audit]

What would prevent that half-baked Chinese knockoff from downloading firmware from the manufacturers website, or heck, even buying one of the wireless products and copying the firmware anyway??

What Theo is saying is that if the manufacturers would allow him (us?) to distribute the firmware, then *BSD, Linux, or any other OS, would work out of the box with any given piece of hardware. Theo's pointing out that any given user can already download the firmware in a Windows package, extract the relevant bits, then use it with a different OS. He wants to avoid the download/extraction steps to make Unix more accessible to non-geeky people.

This is what I had to do with my company-supplied laptop. It's a Dell, with a Broadcom-based WiFi card. To be able to use it with Gentoo I had to install ndiswrapper and then dig the Broadcom stuff out of the Windows directory. If an update comes out, I'll have to do that all over again. If Dell and/or Broadcom would provide the stuff I need in a tarball, it would be really easy to stay updated.

Theo

[CaptainPinko]

People have criticised Theo for being agressive and less than baby-ass smooth --hell he got booted from NetBSD for it-- but he's gotten results first with the quality of OpenBSD and now with this. I think he has earned the right be hostile if he wants to- it works.

I wonder if Linus could do something similar to get ATI and NVidia to open up...

Re:Theo

[cortana]

Well, Nvidia's drivers are already redistributable. Would be nice if ATI would do the same. What would be nicer is if ATI would fix their drivers so they can be built against a kernel-headers package instead of a full-blown kernel-source package.

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, Linus does absolutly nothing worthwhile - seriously! He might be 'some' Linux Loser people's God for some stupid reason, but I can assure you, he's completely useless...

Re:Theo

[__aaahtg7394]

ATI and NVidia are, by the twisted logic you're using, already more open than this! They ship full drivers with source code for ABI compatibility layers. Theo didn't get them to open up at all, all he got was a license for free redistribution of a chunk of data they hadn't previously allowed distributed.

Re:Theo

[Gothmolly]

Except Linus has a reputation for NOT being an asshole, simply because he doesn't care.

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

Theo is the McBain of Interfield.

Re:Theo

[gorim]

Honestly, I think it shows a lack of class on his part.

Ok, for those who already modded me a troll in other postings on this topic, I want to point out the difference to you: this one right here that I just wrote is a troll. The other postings were honest questions and issues that don't deserve to be modded to oblivion just because you disagree with the premise.

Re:Theo

[Egoine]

(i did not mod you)

just read your other post.

granted, not truly a troll, but to be fair, it didn't add a lot of value to the discussion. make some point and argue and consequences instead of wasting more than 50% of your post on the voting-related-joke-that-is-almost-good.

my 0.02$ - probably worth less than that ! :)

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

grep -R \\.com /usr/src/linux

linus has done very well...

Re:Theo

[Anonymous Coward]

Would that be a Red Hat kernel headers package, a Mandrake kernel headers package, or a Debian kernel headers package? Because in the official kernel there is no such thing.

Re:Theo

[cortana]

Im my case, Debian, but it doesn't matter. ATI should include the DRM headers that they built their driver against in their source package, instead of relying on whatever files the end user has, if any, by chance matching their driver.

what's with 'related links' ?

[ch-chuck]

comparison shop for 'your rights online' ? wtf???

That's like the old Lycos at one time put in this automated advertising thing, so you search for libstdc++-devel-3.2.2-5 and it comes back with "Find bargains on libstdc++-devel-3.2.2-5 at Amazon.com!", "See what people are saying about libstdc++-devel-3.2.2-5 on movietalk.com!"

Re:what's with 'related links' ?

[Anonymous Coward]

it was even worse when you tried some not-ver-politicaly-correct-isms.

Find great bargains on black people at amazon.com!

Read reviews from people who bought black people at cnet.com!

Automation is a good thing.. it reminds us (daily) why people should not and can not be replaced by computers.

Well its pretty simple for some drivers

[otlg]

Certain drivers, i.e. video cards, can contain a number of pieces of proprietary information that give one company a leg up on the other (for example software optimizations, like NVidia's GPU JIT compiler)

I can understand why they wouldn't want to give away their competitive advantage.

Now other drives (network cards for example) I see no reason to not open source it.

Re:Well its pretty simple for some drivers

[networkBoy]

"I can understand why they wouldn't want to give away their competitive advantage.

Now other drives (network cards for example) I see no reason to not open source it."

For the very same reason. Just because you arent the high visibility of top end video cards doesn't mean there arent "trade secrets" in your sourcecode.
Do you think 3Com wants to share IP with Cisco? (or Vice versa)
-nB

firmware are not the crown jewels

[Anonymous Coward]

The hardware -design- is the "keys to the kingdom" not the firmware, and they're not even asking for the firmware binaries to be open sourced - merely licensed so that they can be distributed freely by OSS vendors. Feels like I'm just quoting the article here, so I guess you might need to reread it more carefully.

If you've dealt with traditional firmware it's called "firm" because it's usually written to a flash memory of some sort on the device (be it CD Burner, NIC, etc.) in this case these vendors are cheaping out on an inexpensive piece of flash memory, and instead designing the 'firmware' to be loaded by the driver, thus unless the driver loads it each time the computer is turned on, then it disappears, it is not static. As such, it makes the hardware utterly useless unless you not only have a device driver, but also this firmware binary loaded. If they had spend a few cents extra and invested in a flash chip that moved with the hardware, this wouldn't be an issue. Instead, they've turned a hardware design issue into a software problem, and if they don't allow for that firmware blob to be redistributed with software drivers (be they proprietary or otherwise) from other vendors - the hardware is useless.

Rather than making a strawman argument about this issue which you didn't take the time to fully understand despite the large amount of text and background links in the story, it would really help everyone if people would write the vendors in question and ask for them to make a minor change. No one is asking them to open their designs a la opencores.org, merely license their firmware blobs in such a way that the firmware can be shipped with other Operating systems that -already- have OSS drivers.

(Going to write and call now instead of waste more breath on slashdot responses)

Re:firmware are not the crown jewels

[xsbellx]

My God man, this is Slash Dot!

We just cannot allow you to read the article, understand it AND post an eloquent, on-topic response. Please stop this nonsense!

In all seriousness sir/madam, GREAT response!

Re:firmware are not the crown jewels

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, there are advantages to including the firmware with the driver instead of in flash. Primarily, it is much easier to update the firmware in this fashion -- just release a new driver. No worrying about bad flash updates, etc.

Re:firmware are not the crown jewels

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, a great example of this would be the infamous winmodems ey?

is it just me....

[revery]

or has BSD been getting a heck of a lot of stories on the main page lately

It's like they haven't been listening to the trolls at all

--

I write stuff, but not that well and not that often...

Don't chipset firms do most of the driver?

[WoTG]

IANA Design Engineer, but I would guess that knockoffs wouldn't be that big of a problem. I think that most of the driver work is done by the chipset manufacturer. OEM's don't need to do a whole lot of customization - hence the million and one nVidia video card brands that are available. For instance, I've seen some devices get all of their branding from an .ini file that comes with the install file. Since the Chinese mfg's still need to buy a chipset, and the chipset guys are the primary targets for the driver release (I think), I don't see too much of a problem.

This is what I'm gonna do.

[Anonymous Coward]

First; Write your letter to the hardware company.
Second; Sign the above mentioned petition.
Third; Only buy hardware from companies that are OSS friendly, that make good products for which they do not rely on disabling the expensive features in software.
Forth; Send a(nother) letter to the hardware company that makes the devices that you would have preferred to buy, and tell them why you didn't buy it.

You're right, there's no reason.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand it either. That said, at least in the case of Intel - GPL and BSD licensed drivers are already out there which allow for free redistribution, but they don't function without the firmware loaded first. Firmware historically is something that would be written to flash memory on the device in question so this was never an issue - license it however you want, it only moves with the physical hardware. Since vendors are now cheaping out and using firmware binaries loaded by the driver, they've turned a hardware design & licensing issue into a software design and licensing issue. They wouldn't have this problem with a traditional hardware design, and the OSS community wouldn't have to be contacting people to make this point clear.

So let's get writing and calling!

Slashdot - force for harassment

[gorim]

Its really nice that people who run slashdot themselves now encourage corporate harassment and activist measures by posting people's names and email addresses.

Whats next ? Posting email addresses of likely Presidental voters to get them to switch to Slashdot's favored candidate ?

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment

[Anonymous Coward]

If he, or anyone from TI had even bothered to respond at all, do you think anyone would even be calling for action?

Get real! No one will ever make vendors change if it's considered acceptable for them to ignore consumer demands. A far sadder state of affairs is when pundits like you bitch about a guy's email address being posted instead of actually writing or calling to help out with this cause.

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment

[gorim]

I specifically complained about Timothy himself putting a name and email address in the article text itself, rather than letting people follow the submitted links. I feel it is highly inappropriate of Slashdot to extend the /. effect to a person's emailbox.

Get real ? Since when does every consumer demand require a response ?

As for my bitching, I am amazed that someone should so casually assume that their cause is so just that others should just follow along blindly and not raise alarm at harassing tactics used.

Its one thing for Theo to solicit emailings, but another thing for Timothy of Slashdot himself to paste a person's name, title, and email address right into article posting, or allow such to happen.

This is extremely irresponsible on Slashdot's part to stray away from merely posting links to articles that incite harassment, and instead directly post links to actively incite harassment.

Is it the policy of Slashdot to allow this ?

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment

[gorim]

I guess I should have mentioned,

I am actually myself extremely sympathetic to this "cause" in general. Drivers should be easier to write, and companies should be more accommodating to open source.

I use FreeBSD. Love BSD. Other BSDs are cool too.

I just felt this recent tactic has a very bad smell to it. I am amazed that people have no misgivings about being a part of it.

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment

[Anonymous Coward]

..Timothy of Slashdot himself to paste a person's name, title, and email address right into article posting, or allow such to happen.

Are you honestly offended that Timothy posted the public contact details of a company representive on a public forum? Yeah, I can see how that's terribly irresponsible!

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment

[evilviper]

I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what your problem is.

This is the public contact information for employees of a company we wish to persuade. How is this somehow unfair? It's not as if anyone suggested doing anything damaging with this information.

Is it also somehow wrong to post the e-mail addresses of senators, congressmen, and other public servants?

Making them click-through to another page before getting the e-mail address is just a pointless hoop that would make no difference.

it's not just you

[Anonymous Coward]

If the BSD community can be the ones to spur off efforts to free up firmware licensing then they deserve all the press mentions they get I'd say.

Open-source platform support can mean big money

[tachyonflow]

In some cases involving multimedia hardware, it is in a hardware manufacturer's best interest to withhold information and support for open-source platforms. In the absence of free software support for their hardware, they can charge very large sums of money for driver software and support to consumer electronics manufacturers with deep pockets. (Open source platforms such as Linux and BSD are extremely popular in the consumer electronics world.)

I've personally seen this happen. :/

What the hell were they thinking?!

[FyRE666]

Honestly, why would someone submit this to Slashdot? I mean, they've managed to submit hundreds of "well written" messages to vendors, and now they're about to fuck it all up by encouraging the illiterate, and largely uninformed masses here to send in their own special brands of wisdom.... Then there's the goatse fans, tubgirl gang, "BSD is dying" trolls and other shining stars of the forum just waiting to get in on the fun... ... oh well, it could have worked ;-)

Re:What the hell were they thinking?!

[evilviper]

they've managed to submit hundreds of "well written" messages to vendors, and now they're about to fuck it all up by encouraging the illiterate, and largely uninformed masses here to send in their own special brands of wisdom....

The "well written" messages to T.I. haven't yeilded any positive results, so there aren't any bridges that we risk burning by letting loose the retard army :-)

They haven't listened to reason, even from hundreds of professional people, so maybe hundreds of thousands of idiots will do the job better. It couldn't possibly hurt.

Parent is a TROLL?????? WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this a troll? Mods on crack?

Re:Parent is a TROLL?????? WTF

[setagllib]

Not the first - in another thread, a chap was modded troll for what anyone else would clearly find Funny +4 or so. These things happen.

Grandparent (your parent) had misconceptions regarding BSD because he reads too many troll posts, but was surprised to find that they're still pushing the OS [1] industry forward, even with the big companies (the Linux approach has often been to either make the companies your slaves (IBM, SGI, etc) or defeat them outright (Microsoft) - pretty successful strategy I'll admit, but not very good for real-life karma). [1] Open source, Operating system, whichever you think fits more

More Companies Are Needed

[ssimontis]

This is great. I hope several companies agree. It will be hard to get Linksys to agree, if they try. Linksys will not do anything about it. I have written to them three times about it, and gotten bullshit each time saying that they might be working on drivers for other OSes. The more companies we get the better. Wireless support is the only issue stopping me from using BSD or Linux.

Re:More Companies Are Needed

[ValiantSoul]

Thats why I bought a Wireless to Ethernet Bridge. It's great, config usign a webbased thingy then connect via ethernet to your computer. FreeBSD (and OpenBSD in my server's case) running wirelessly via ethernet.

Re:More Companies Are Needed

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you should check out the whole "Project Evil" project with FreeBSD 5.3. It's pretty good; I'm using a Broadcom 54g wireless card on FreeBSD with a windows driver.

Re:Slashdot - force for harassment TROLL ???

[gorim]

Nice I was modded a troll. It was an honest question about what I think is a real issue with original posting article.

Is Slashdot now intending to extend the /. effect to peoples mailboxes ?

A person's name and email was posted in the text of the slashdot topic. I am not referring to the original article linked, which of course it is too, but in the actual slashdot posting. This is quite frankly, a sad state of affairs that this would be done.

"You have 1,000,000 new messages"

[IgD]

Here is the reply I got when e-mailing him:

"This is an automatic reply.
I will be away from the office on business in Europe from 12n Monday 11/1 through Friday 11/5. During this time, there may be a delay responding to your email. /b"

I wonder what his expression will be on Monday when he checks his e-mail...

Re:"You have 1,000,000 new messages"

[Anonymous Coward]

I guarantee you that he is on a Whorebreak in Amsterdam.

Activism Shows Drivers Can Be Freed

[roman_mir]

I want to break free
I want to break free
I want to break free from your lies
You're so self satisfied I don't need you
I've got to break free
God knows God knows I want to break free

---
Shit, I hope so, driving is a bitch in Toronto, I don't know what I would do if it was shown that drivers could not be freed. I say: Free Drivers, Free Drivers!

Firmware is not drivers

[iabervon]

This is about firmware, which is code which gets sent to the device and helps the device work. These are not drivers, which you run on your processor. Typically, firmware is written either for some weird variant of C, or for a completely non-sequential language (for FPGAs). You'd probably have a really hard time compiling it if you had the source. One set of firmware I know of only builds with a particular non-current version of a $10K/seat commercial compiler; this isn't unusual. Furthermore, they're often signed, if only to keep people from messing up their hardware by loading a broken version into it.

In any case, these aren't programs for your computer, and it is merely a matter of convenience that they aren't sealed into the device at the factory (so you can update them without sending the device back). It doesn't make any more sense to want the source for the firmware for your NIC than it would be to ask for the source to the firmware for your microwave.

Previously, the firmware was only available from the manufacturers directly, and licensed such that you weren't supposed to redistribute it. OpenBSD people complained that making people go online to update their NIC so that it works is a bit annoying, and that they'd like to be able to get it from OpenBSD, whose CD they would be getting and who would be happy to download the firmware for them.

Re:Firmware is not drivers

[drfreak]

These are not drivers, which you run on your processor.

True, but the firmware is still needed in order for the driver to do it's job. The issue is not about the public having access to firmware source code, the issue is that these developers need to be able to re-distribute the firmware binaries in order for their drivers to work "out of the box." From what I can see in reading the emails, these licenses are too restrictive for the developers to feel safe in re-distributing them. One of the replies I read from Intel seemed like it was saying they do not mind redistribution, but interpreted the letter sent to them as a plea to change the binary license to be compatible with BSD. I think if there was more communication and less threats against the use of this hardware, a lot more might get done. For the above example, maybe just asking for clarification in writing about permission to re-distribute the firmare binaries would solve the problem?

This reminds me of the majority of distributions that refuse to bundle proprietary video card drivers with their CDs because they do not think they can. Both NVidia and ATI have no problem with the re-distribution of their drivers. NVidia even gives the option of repackaging the driver already compiled for your own custom kernel, and gives a command-line option for their .run installer to do so.

Is there not a happy medium we can reach here? Do we absolutely need to be balking at licenses that allow us to integrate these products in our distributions just because they do not allow us to make modifications?

Re:Firmware is not drivers

[iabervon]

There is some concern about the issues involved with turning the binary firmware blob into a string constant in a C file to be compiled into the kernel image so that it is accessible to the driver before there is a filesystem. Having a license to distribute a file is different from having a license to distribute a program that, without any input, outputs the file.

Of course, you get into awkward circumstances here. What if your program messes up and fails to output the file exactly as it was supposed to? You now have a program that outputs a modified version of the file. Of course, you'd want to fix it so the device would work, but OSS developers don't want to be responsible for copyright violation if their code misbehaves.

So they want to be legally permitted to distribute non-working modifications to the firmware (just in case), although they don't care about having any way of making useful modifications to the firmware as sent to the device.

Probably the best thing is for the manufacturers to encrypt the firmware, and have the device decrypt and check it, and let people do whatever they want with the binary (because they won't be able to do anything useful other than send it to the device). Or, alternatively, let people mess with the firmware however they want, so long as they don't mind not having any source for it.

Of course, I think the standard practice in Linux is to distribute the original file and a program to convert it into a C file to be compiled into the driver, steps which are no less legitimate than converting it into PCI bus transfers. Then it is simply embedded in the kernel binary in much the same way that it was embedded in the filesystem.

I think Linux at some point included some C files of firmware, which were determined not to be properly licensed and were removed in favor of only distributing untranslated firmware files.

Re:Firmware is not drivers

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD people complained that making people go online to update their NIC so that it works is a bit annoying

...chortle...

Re:Firmware is not drivers

[evilviper]

making people go online to update their NIC so that it works

It's rather funny that they don't see the catch in there :-)

What would prevent that NOW?

[cbreaker]

These vendors already give their drivers out to everyone with Windows distributions. And the drivers are freely available to download from their web sites.

So what would stop this now?

You can't be paranoid about every possible possibility especially when the risk has already been taken.

Don't help distribute problems.

[jbn-o]

They don't want you getting a driver from some shady site that put a virus in it, and thus giving their company a bad name (at least for dumb-computer-users).

Licensing to disallow distribution of proprietary software doesn't prevent this from occurring, whether the software is "firmware" or an "operating system".

All that is gained with this petition is the ability to help an proprietor more efficiently distribute their non-free software. Users still have no idea what that software will do in the future or how it works now. Users don't gain the ability to fix it when it breaks or improve it to make it do something better.

The proponents of this petition and letter-writing drive are clear in their intent: they are stressing popularity over software freedom; their users are gaining the ability to help their neighbor more conveniently lose their software freedom. In a way, it is ironic that this plea to become proprietary software distributors is championed by those who criticize the strong copyleft in the GNU GPL (which the OpenBSD folks are known to do, putting in time to replacing GNU GPL-covered programs with new BSD-licensed replacements).

It's no accident that this call for increased popularity and out-of-the-box utility is being done in the name of "open source". That movement pushes aside software freedom in pursuit of a message to make businesses feel more comfortable. For the open source movement, proprietary software is merely a less technically efficient way of speaking to businesses. Popularity, to them, is more valuable than software freedom. And that's a shame because history teaches that popularity won't get users freedom. Proprietors are chiefly looking to sell users software which denies users their freedom. Proprietors want to treat users as a market, not contribute to the free software community. The open source philosophy makes this more politically feasible.

From the essay:

The main argument for the term ``open source software'' is that ``free software'' makes some people uneasy. That's true: talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might rather ignore. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may reject the idea for that. It does not follow that society would be better off if we stop talking about these things.

I realize that not being able to use the latest hardware is inconvenient. But one's software freedom should not take a back seat to convenience.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[Flower]

The issue isn't the driver. The driver already exists. It's already open. If you had bothered to get an understanding of the issue you'd realize the problem is the firmware for the device. These companies, in an effort to save money, don't put the firmware directly on the card. They have the driver load it. If the vendor hadn't gone the cheap route this issue wouldn't exist because the firmware would be directly on the card and the free driver would just work.

What Theo and the community want is the right to distribute the firmware with the driver so it works right out of the install. There isn't anything wrong with this.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[jbn-o]

I never said the issue was the driver. The word "driver" in a quote in my post, not my words, so I don't see how you could misinterpret my post that way. More importantly, the location of the software and how it is installed in the device is a red herring. I see no reason to believe that proprietary firmware somehow negates the need for software freedom.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[ComputerSlicer23]

More importantly, the location of the software and how it is installed in the device is a red herring

Well, that's an interesting point. However, in this case, the firmware could effectively be in silicon. It's just easier to make it not be in silicon. Do you ask Intel for the rights to their Microcode? Intel/AMD CPU's (that's pretty much definitely hardware), have microcode patches.

Do you demand Transmeta software. Their CPU is a big software translation engine, but they burn their software into a piece of silicon because it executes faster.

Do you ask Intel for the plans to their CPU so you can use the Free Software concepts to fix up their CPU designs? They are nothing but big pieces of software that are turned into hardware by a very precise etch-a-sketch.

The problem is that hardware is software, and software is hardware. Especially at the level of firmware. If it's programming an FPGA, that's literally hardware that is changeable. You are configuring a bunch of AND and OR gates. If it's running an ARM, you might have a development environment.

However, if it's say the Adaptec SCSI firmware, you have a non-standard instruction set, with non-documented hardware. A non-existant tool chain. What do you want the source for? The only reason they do things in firmware, is so they can avoid soldering wires, flashing the PROM, or forcing you to physically pull the ROM and replace it if they find a problem. If they document it's behaviour and say "avoid that", it effectively becomes a hardware problem, the same as if they burned it to silicon.

Open Source is a fairly practical solution to an Engineering problem. It's applying the age old solution of scientific peer review to the world of software. The freedom is incidental, but most of the original great science was fairly publicly available. At the level you are talking about, you are beginning to approach, "Well, is it a wave, or is a particle", when discussing "is it software, or is it hardware". I mean the CPU is flash upgradeable, and I'd say the CPU is about as hardware like as hardware gets.

I agree that most of the time, all software should be open. However, in the case of the firmware, I think several different issues come up. Not the least of which are, you'll need the vendor to open the docs on the specifications of the hardware internals (this works at a lower layer then the driver does). You'll needs a tool chain for an assembler that might literally be a one-off designed in house by a hardware engineer. At some point, they'll be a layer of software, that until there is an open hardware maker that will be inheriently propritary (documenting the firmware properly essentially draws a blueprint for the hardware). The economics of the situation make no sense for the hardware makers to make it public knowledge. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but economics makes the computer world go around. The economics of hardware is what made writting software a possibility for so many of us. To blindly ignore them is naive. I wish that there was more open hardware that was actually made and sold as high quality equipment. I know I'd pay a premium for it to get hardware that was open all the way down to the traces on the board level.

Kirby

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[tedu]

what hardware do you have in your computer that came with complete source for all its firmware?

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[jbn-o]

These days, I don't ask because I'll do no better than getting proprietary software in exchange for the asking, which is not what I would want. In the past, it wasn't this way which is why I don't buy the excuse about how the economics of hardware work. Vendors have come to realize that people are willing to pay for hardware they can't fully use without the vendor's proprietary software. Since the public doesn't know about software freedom, they don't value it. Since they don't value software freedom, they have no qualms about jumping from master to master on the basis of chasing pragmatism. If I had the time and skill, I'd reverse engineer the products and release that information to the community. Instead, I'm willing to pay for products I can use in freedom which means preferring products developed with full specs made available to me and helping other people reverse engineer hardware.

Open Source is a fairly practical solution to an Engineering problem. It's applying the age old solution of scientific peer review to the world of software. The freedom is incidental, but most of the original great science was fairly publicly available.

Actually, this story is about how that is precisely what the movement is not doing. When one obtains proprietary software (and that's all that the OpenBSD people are really doing), that software is not subject to peer review. No specifications change hands. The OpenBSD team doesn't better understand the inner workings of the hardware. One can pass copies of the binary firmware on (this is all the OpenBSD team apparently seeks to do) and that's about it. That is, as the essay I linked to said, one of the big differences between the free software and open source movements. For the open source movement, proprietary software is acceptable because (as you say) "freedom is incidental".

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[Todesmetall]

It's no accident that this call for increased popularity and out-of-the-box utility is being done in the name of "open source". That movement pushes aside software freedom in pursuit of a message to make businesses feel more comfortable. For the open source movement, proprietary software is merely a less technically efficient way of speaking to businesses. Popularity, to them, is more valuable than software freedom. And that's a shame because history teaches that popularity won't get users freedom. Proprietors are chiefly looking to sell users software which denies users their freedom. Proprietors want to treat users as a market, not contribute to the free software community. The open source philosophy makes this more politically feasible.

That's one of the reasons why I use Debian. They may sometimes seem too dogmatic when licensing issues come up, however IMO it's good that they hold up their principles. BTW there have been lots of discussions recently about this on the mailing lists, e.g. here, here or here.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[spauldo]

While I agree in principle, these are for wireless cards (I didn't read the article, but that's what the headline says). You can't release the firmware for these things. It's not an issue with the company's secrets or anything, it's FCC regulations.

If you had the firmware source, you could change the frequency and other aspects of the transmitted signal. The FCC doesn't allow manufacturers to make these parameters tweakable.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[codguy]

However, in the case of the firmware, I think several different issues come up

No, no, no--this whole argument is irrelevant because this is not what is being requested.

They are only requesting the ability to freely distribute the firmware with OpenBSD and other OSS. They are not asking that the hard-/firm-/software be opened for use by OSS.

Most hardware manufacturers allow Microsoft to freely distribute basic driver software for their products. Does it seem unreasonable that OSS should not be able to distribute they same type of stuff?

Does Microsoft require that hardware manufacturers open the code to them in order for it to be included in Windows? No. And this is the same with OpenBSD's request efforts. They are not requesting that the code be opened, they simply want to be able to distribute it so when you load their distro (or any OSS distro) your hardware will be functional immediately instead of having to go to a website to download it.

This would eliminate many chicken-or-the-egg first problems. For a user that only has wireless connectivity, how will they be able to get to a website to download software if their dumb wireless NIC is brain-dead on arrival because of this firmware load-on-the-fly technique? Yeah, of course there are many solutions, but the simplest one would be to have the firmware freely distributable so it could be included along with any distro.

Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. So the request to simply include it (no reverse engineering, no open source code, etc.) along with an OSS distro doesn't seem outlandish at least to me.

For those who think this only affects OpenBSD, you have quite shallow foresight.

--codguy

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[jbn-o]

First, I wouldn't believe a claim like that without backing from primary sources.

Second, assuming this can be illustrated with primary source backing, I would want to know how far this goes--does this include 802.11b wireless cards as well? I know they're not the latest technology, but if this is just another place where software freedom temporarily requires having less than the state-of-the-art, that's fine (and, frankly, 802.11b isn't bad at all for most people most of the time). I don't say this as if to offer some kind of exception from software freedom. I say this to offer a feasible compromise where software freedom doesn't take a back seat to convenience.

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[ComputerSlicer23]

In the past, it wasn't this way which is why I don't buy the excuse about how the economics of hardware work

Uhhh you must have some mysterious insight into the past about computers I lack. I wasn't around in the 1960's (wasn't terribly aware of computers until sometime in the 1990's). Can you describe how it used to work for me, as opposed to saying "it wasn't this way".

However, from what I've read, sure you got the source for the OS. Back then, you *rented* computer equipment a lot of the time (I believe that was IBM's original business model). I'm not sure precisely how long that lasted. However, back then, you bought computer equipment for $100K (which was a lot more money back then it is now). It took up the size of a room, and non of the software was runable on any other piece of equipment from someone besides that vendor. Heck, you could get a copy of UNIX source way back in the mid 70's. You could modify it, you could do whatever you wanted with it, except for give your copy to someone who didn't have a license. I've never known any company that allowed you to give away their software to someone who didn't have a license (some companies might have let you exchange fixes, but I'm fairly sure none of them let you give their software to anyone else, if they did that might be a clue as none of them that kept that policy are still in business).

When a piece of hardware broke, or had bad firmware, they sent a guy in a suit out to swap out the part (as opposed to shipping you the new firmware like they would today). You paid maintience on your computers that was on the order of 20% of the value of the computer. You had to pay fees and service. IBM shipped absolutely identical printers for two different models. One model printed twice as fast as the other, the only difference was a jumper setting.

When a part broke you had one vendor you could get a part from. When a disk drive went bad, you had one vendor you could get a replacement from.

Those we're the bad old days. I'm fairly sure that if you actually got what you wanted, you'd scream bloody murder to get back to the current situation. Unless you are just that much of a masochaist, or you have an ample supply of money.

You might not be aware of this, but computers used to be worth real money. I don't mean that $3,000 USD I paid in 1995 for a Gateway, I mean, in 1970, you could easily spend $250K (which is several million in todays dollars) on what was an entry level mini. When the transactions are that large, copyright violations are small deal. Hardware was expensive, and software was cheap. Programmer time was worth nothing, and computers were worth a lot (read "The Mythical Man Month", that was said by the guy who was in charge of the single largest computer development in the history of man during "the good old days").

You not believing that economics work that way based on the past is like closing your eyes and denying that I exist because you can't see me. Well, I don't believe that more then 10% of the world's population can not farm and have sustainable living. It didn't use to be that way. At one point in the point in the past, we are both highly accurate. Mine being a much longer time ago then yours. The world has passed you by while you were not paying attention.

You can try and present why it this is not the only sort of economy that would work, but you can't do it by pointing at the past and saying "see it used to be that way". The world changes, and it changes fast. Especially in the area of computing. The major change you missed was that fabricating hardware is cheap, while fabricating software is expensive. That's were the economic model changed that you apparently are in willful self-denial about.

Economics of the world is fairly vicious, if there was a better way, just describe it to people who are incredibly rich how it's better. It'll happen. They stand to make a lot of money making it happen. I'm sure

Re:Don't help distribute problems.

[spauldo]

The madwifi FAQ - they state the reason for the binary only HAL.

The specific regulation is here

Basically, the problem is that if you were able to tweak the settings of your transmitter chip, you could do things the device wasn't manufactured for, some of which may cause interference and whatnot. This is perfectly fine - if you have a license from the FCC for such things, but if you don't, you're SOL. Thus, by making the firmware binary only, it's difficult enough to tweak those parameters that it counts as a manufactured device, just like a toy walkie talkie does, and the manufacturer bears the responsibility for the device. This way you don't have to pay a ton of money for an FCC license just to talk to your access point.

Do you really think being hostile is good ?

[anti-NAT]

I think he has earned the right be hostile if he wants to- it works.

From the Age article :

He said he found it sad that the Linux crowd did not help in the activism at all. "(They) always seem to talk about freedom but are not helping in this activism. It's basically BSD people doing it. That is curious. For instance, do you think Linus (Torvalds) would send a mail to TI? No, I would bet money that he did not. Yet he is aware of what is going on. That's very odd to me."

Do you think this will go across well with the "Linux crowd". "Betting money" that Linus wouldn't help ? Questioning Linus's commitment to freedom drivers? Do you think Theo has made more or less friends with this statement ?

Where was his announcement to the LKML (which is probably the most central contact point for the "Linux crowd") that he was going to pursue the vendors, and an invitation for the Linux community to help with that effort ? Did he email Linus directly ?

Looking at LKML briefly, the only post I can find specific to this effort is here, dated the 28th of October. It suggests that the effort has already been on going.

In other words, it appears that the "Linux crowd" didn't know this was happening until after it had started.

It seems that Theo has forgotten that he didn't invite the "Linux crowd" to participate in the first place.

I don't want to start a licensing flamewar (it's my opinion, I'm allowed to have one, and you're allowed to have a different one), however, in my opinion Linus is more supportive of openness than Theo is, because the GPL requires continued ancestral openness, where as the BSD license doesn't.

I wonder if Linus could do something similar to get ATI and NVidia to open up...

The day he picked the GPL, and the day he made a conscious decision to enforce it with the arrival of binary modules was the day he did all he could. On many occasions he (and others) have provided good technical justification for their decision to only support open drivers. If the vendors such as ATI and NVidia don't agree with or see the benefits of this approach, there isn't much Linus can do.

ATI don't need to see NVidia code ...

[anti-NAT]

Now. If Nvidia open sourced its drivers you know what would happen? ATI would look at the code and learn how to make better drivers. Then the ATI driver would be just as good if not better than the NVidia. Linux users wouldn't choose nvidia because of better support because ATI would be a reasonable alternative.

I disagree with this. There are plenty of open source drivers in the Linux kernel for high performance hardware that would provide examples for ATI to follow.

One example would be the Intel, GPL licensed driver for the Intel 10 GBps Ethernet cards. Another example would be the GPL open source drivers for the s2io XFrame 10 Gbps Ethernet cards. I'm sure there would be others, probably part of the IBM mainframe support open source code.

FCC red herring

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's one response to the FCC issue (basically, there's higher risk if OSS vendors try to write their own firmware instead of appropriately licensed vendor-supplied firmware binaries):
response

All your stuff about radio licenses, considering that we're talking about unlicensed spectrum is silly and uninformed (I used to work for a cell/ss7/tcpip vendor and we dealt with LICENSED spectrum). If you stay under certain dB/wattages (which the -hardware- will restrict you to no matter what wonky firmware you might dream could be concocted), there's no issue. Don't believe me? Go out and buy a normal prism2.5 chipset based wireless NIC, flash it with the same firmware of a 300mW Zcomax prism2.5 card. Guess what, you won't have boosted the signal any, even though you can run them on the same firmware, why do you think that is? Your arguments wrt to FCC, though you make them sound good, don't hold any water.

You also don't sound like you're actually clear on the distinction between firmware binary or driver, you should read the post (and links) to clarify this. Moreover, there's a HUGE distinction between firmware binary and a HAL (hardware abstraction layer) as you mention in the atheros drivers.

I'll explain: In the case of firmware binaries - they substitute for what would typically be written to a flash chip on a network card, and are platform independent. A HAL layer, as in the case of the ath drivers, is an obfuscation layer within the -driver- itself. It is kept in binary form simply to attempt to thwart reverse engineering attempts as far as I can tell, and would never be written to flash memory as a standard firmware binary would be in traditional hardware design.

As a result, the HAL binary is platform and architecture specific. That may be fine if you only have to use it with x86 architectures, but you'll never be able to use that driver (with binary HAL) in, for example a G4 mac, or an ultrasparc. In the case of the firmware binary however, the driver is completely cross platform (assuming it's well written) and the firmware binary is specific to the Network card which could be shoved into any PCI (or maybe pcmcia) slot, it does not care what the architecture of the machine which the card is plugged into. The firmware binary is mated to the NIC; whereas the HAL binary is mated to the driver. Get the difference?

In other words, Atheros chipsets and drivers are a completely DIFFERENT issue than what we're talking about here. I'm glad that you're happy with it in Linux, on presumably an x86 machine - people who use other OS's and platforms (or OS's which run on multiple platforms and try to support them all diligently, e.g. OpenBSD, or even NetBSD) will continue to look elsewhere unless we see what Theo means by 'another creative way'

Being locked into hardware vendors for stupid reasons isn't desireable, regardless of what you think of Theo in this case - this is not an argument specific to OpenBSD. All OSS vendors (be they Free/Net/*BSD, Linux distros or more) can benefit form amiable firmware licensing. If these vendors hadn't cheaped out, we could all live with them and the already existing GPL and BSD licensed drivers, flashing firmware in rare occasions. We have that with prism2.5, hermes/lucent and other older legacy chipsets, but seems like a bunch of people decided to lessen dependence on flash memory and OSS users as a whole are feeling the pinch slowly but surely unless we tell them what we want.

Re:FCC red herring

[RedLeg]

Here's one response to the FCC issue (basically, there's higher risk if OSS vendors try to write their own firmware instead of appropriately licensed vendor-supplied firmware binaries)

This is probably true. It's also probably irrelevant. The issue, to a LAWYER, and let's not forget that they're the ones that matter in cases like this, is compliance with the law. Atheros' Lawyers care if they comply. If YOU reverse engineer the driver and in doing so, violate the FCC regs for power, frequency, etc., that's YOUR problem, not theirs. But they are legally not allowed to abet you (by giving you programatic access to these controls) in doing so.

All your stuff about radio licenses, considering that we're talking about unlicensed spectrum is silly and uninformed (I used to work for a cell/ss7/tcpip vendor and we dealt with LICENSED spectrum). If you stay under certain dB/wattages (which the -hardware- will restrict you to.....

This is just wrong. First of all, this is IEEE 802.11, not a cell phone. The radios in these chips will happily vary their power and frequencies if the driver tells them to because they are SOFTWARE CONTROLLED RADIOS, and the PHY (Physical Layer specification) for IEEE 802.11 REQUIRES them to operate this way, ie to vary their frequencies. The trick is that while the BAND is specified worldwide, the permitted frequencies within the band are specific to each country. Futher, the allowed radiated power can also vary locally.

I am not making this crap up, nor am I quoting from some trade rag, journal or online posting. I've spent the last several years as an active, voting participant in IEEE 802.11, sitting in the room with the engineers who design these chipsets and radios. If only one of them, from one company, had explained things this way, it would be one thing. But the reality is that this is the story from all of the mainstream chipset / radio vendors, and it's validated by the other folks in the room who specialize in regulatory issues.

who asks on lkml isn't as relevant as being asked

[Anonymous Coward]

You make a good point with regards to writing the LKML. Has Hans' post garnered any additional support do you think? Let's hope so.

I kind of get the feeling you think that the linux community needs to be formally invited by Theo himself before they'll participate. Not to mischaracterize your statements, but since I submitted the story to slashdot and have been trying to keep undeadly readership abreast of this issue for quite a while now (it actually began in small part almost two weeks ago) I'm not quite sure what kind of invitation is needed still in order to get more people involved, I can't tell Theo: "Hey Post to lkml, that'll get them active" But I can do my own part, make my own submissions, get the word out as best I can personally. As a community, we have many voices, all asking to help each other in different ways. Theo's statement in the age article may be a bit blunt as is his manner of speaking, but do you think it's innaccurate, or in any case relevant to the larger issue?

Please keep in mind that this issue really is a community effort for ALL OSS users and vendors, and we hope to cooperate with everyone involved. Griping about when people were let in on the start of campaigning, in my opinion, is less important than doing something about it -now-, which I hope that you and others will. Whether Theo was in his bounds to comment on an issue many linux users probably weren't aware of is something he could better answer himself. I will say it's probably fair that Linus is aware of this issue in a general sense, but who can say for sure other than Linus himself. Personally, I think Theo's comment that you quoted is most likely an attempt to goad those who identify more closely with the linux community to prove otherwise - a friendly challenge if you will. I'm -sure- that slashdot readership's response could make undeadly (or even that combined with OpenBSD mailing lists) readers' responses seem insignificant.

No worries about licensing flamewars, we all have different opinions there (fwiw I have feelings for and against both BSD and GPL and have ideal preferences in a wholely different area). Let's keep the licensing issue related to firmware binary distribution for now, and keep in mind the distinction between the firmware binary and the driver (this is also a different issue than a HAL binary and a driver, but that's another issue). :)

I hope that we can count on your (and other slashdot readers') support!

Sincerely,

grey
editor - undeadly.org

stupid question?

[advocate_one]

but if you actually own the hardware (ie it came with your computer or you got it from the shop) then shouldn't you also have the firmware available on the driver disc that came with the item???

Re:stupid question?

[tehdaemon]

Yes, but it is usually in a form that is only useable by the windows driver, and in any case, it is not on the latest $LINUX_OR_BSD_DISTRO_OF_CHOICE iso image that you just downloaded, burned and are trying to install.

reread the story

[Anonymous Coward]

This addresses the FCC 'issue' appropriately. Moreover, we already have open source drivers, and we aren't asking for open source firmware, just freely redistributable licensing. Embedding firmware in hardware as you mention is precisely what used to happen (via a flash mem), and this was a non-issue with those chipsets (e.g. prism2.5). If you reread the story, you'll see that now vendors ship firmware binaries, without which the hardware is useless, even with an open source driver.

Please don't even bring up the notion of a freely distributable binary/closed source driver - that's what things like NDISulator basically workaround, they're nasty ugly kludges that are a REALLY REALLY bad idea for a large number of reasons (I won't get into them here, just like I won't go into why FCC arguments are a red herring). Closed binary firmware isn't ideal, but it's what we've dealt with for quite a while already (only, as mentioned before, it shipped on flashmem built into the hardware, not as a binary loaded by a driver).

As an aside, you mention the prospect that some of these chipsets are SDR's. If one of these vendors -did- open up the firmware binary or provide some sort of SDR chipset SDK, just think of what projects like GNURadio could accomplsih affordably and ubiquitously. THAT, unfortunately is probably a pipe dream for now, but would be WICKED cool (think affordable GNURadio, mixed with MythTV maybe). That sounds like another activism campaign worth fighting for someday for GNURadio. Today, let's just stick to the issue at hand and try to get these firmware binaries licensed in a manner that would allow OSS vendors to ship them out of the box.

SCO

[6th time lucky]

And if it dosent come back, hunt it down and kill it :)

A minor "nice to have" after solving real problems

[iamacat]

Most people would be happy to go to 10 different URLs and fill in forms with their name, address and e-mail (given a strong promise not to spam) as long as after downloading the firmware all the hardware they had worked and had sufficient software to control and use it.

The real problems of free OSes are missing drivers, unstable drivers and drivers that need a recompile after installing the next kernel patch. Someone should just write kwine, a subsystem for running NT drivers under Linux. Must be a lot simplier that supporting Direct X games or other things in userland.

Another reason to Love OpenBSD (besides t-shirts)

[jamej]

How can wimpy Canada produce such a whip butt stud leader as Theo. I'm not surprised Theo is ahead of the rest of the world in this endeavor. Any IT company worthy of their technology will do what Theo suggests in this matter. Theo is a great Jedi leader. Listen and learn. (Recommend you all but the famous blow fish t-shirt and wear it while meditating.)

Theo's rewriting history on this one.

[kkkelley]

I worked for six months to get Atmel to release their firmware under a licence which allowed redistribution. That was for use with the Linux atmel_cs driver. And I collaborated with Manuel Estrada Sainz to add the hotplug firmware loading code to Linux, to avoid violating the GPL by linking Atmel's proprietary stuff with the kernel. And I built and distributed packages of the firmware. And all of this is a piss-poor alternative to just releasing the source!

Re:Theo's rewriting history on this one.

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenBSD another others aren't looking for the source to this, they're looking to re-distribute the binary blob file (firmware) under a free license.

vendors...

[zxflash]

there is probably a long list of vendors that will hold out to the very end on making decent open source drivers available... you can be sure any co with strong ties to ms will not play this game unless there is clear incentive (profit, from more product being sold to the linix community) and that is probably very hard to measure...

Re:who asks on lkml isn't as relevant as being ask

[anti-NAT]

Thanks for you comments, I appreciate it, and I do agree with the principle.

Based on the few things I've heard and seen regarding the way Theo deals with people on certain issues, I would wonder whether if a "formal" invitation had been put the LKML, and the Linux community jumped up to support it, Theo would have then complained, possibly in a public forum such as a news paper, that the "Linux crowed took over". His motives can sometimes seem to be not completely altruistic.

While the issue I'm commenting is, at the end of the day, fairly petty, I think it would be useful for Theo to realise that criticism such as his can only hurt his cause, not help it. It is better to promote the people who help you, when they do, and forget about it when they don't; it will only encourage more to offer their help, when they see they get recognised for their contributions.

In actuality...

[Svartalf]

It can be the keys to the kingdom. In the case of WiFi cards, there's less discrete hardware and a hell of a lot more software in the form of DSP code. Most of the modern WiFi cards happen to be software radios and you can exceed power limitations, recode the thing to broadcast on bands that aren't allowed, etc.
In the case of DSL chips, it's the same story.

The problem is wide-spread

[pappin]

This really is a big problem. I've tried to talk to companies like this before, in order to write drivers... all I needed was the communications spec for talking to the hardware, but *every* company I came across had their specs locked up, afraid of the competition.

I have to say, I thought it was pretty silly; the fact of the matter is that the hardware can be made by anyone using common chips and communications with that hardware is going to be fairly similar despite hiding the specs.

A real bummer, I'm glad to hear that they may finally be getting over the fears.

Open hardware vendors

[jonwil]

I would like to see someone compile a list of all cases where it is possible to use a given piece of hardware (e.g. WiFi card) using only 100% Open Source code for all the stuff that executes on the host CPU (closed firmware that executes on a microcontroler or CPU on the card itself is OK as long as the licence for said firmware is good enough to enable it to be packaged with said Open Source drivers).

Drivers that only exist because someone reverse engineered the hardware and there is absolutly no company support for them dont count.

Let me know when I can build a machine to play the (soon to be open source) Quake III using only hardware that meets this criteria.

The "open" ATI drivers dont really count since they (AFAIK) dont support the latest cards and dont do 3D in any way that is good enough for Quake III.

If someone can show me a way to play Quake III on linux using 100% open source code (or 100% open source code except for the Q3 binary itself since thats not open yet), feel free.
But everything I have seen and read sugests that what I ask is not possible.

Re:Open hardware vendors

[latroM]

The "open" ATI drivers dont really count since they (AFAIK) dont support the latest cards and dont do 3D in any way that is good enough for Quake III.

Quake 3 works very well with the Free driver.

Re:Open hardware vendors

[jonwil]

ok, that is something I was not aware of :)
Firstly, does the free ATI driver support a card (well enough to play Quake III) you can buy new from ATI right now?
And secondly, is there any support for the "free" driver (running on the aformentioned current ATI Card) from ATI (e.g. specs or whatever else)?

i.e. can you run Quake III using an ATI card/GPU that is still being maufactured by ATI along with totally free drivers where all the info used to produce the bits of code used to get Quake III to run has been provided by ATI.

Re:Open hardware vendors

[latroM]

I play Urban Terror daily with the Free driver. The newest cards aren't supported, check dri.sf.net to see which is the newest supported. I am using a radeon 8500. I'm not sure about the documentation of the driver, I only know that it works. IIRC ati doesn't manufacture those older cards any more, but you can get one as used.

Re:SDR FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not true that WiFi card makers are not allowed, under U.S. regulations, to expose the transmit power control, tuning, etc., to the user. People who say so, even people at Atheros who say so, are mistaken or lying. (As one FCC lawyer told me in the mealy-mouthed language of Washington, D.C., "it sounds to me like they are being less than forthright.")

And yes, I am quite aware of the FCC's SDR rules. Why, I have even read them, which is more than virtually anybody else who is commenting has done! A maker certifies their product under the SDR rules *at their own option*, and then (and only then) do they accept certain strictures (they have to take measures to protect against tampering) in exchange for a streamlined re-certification process. AFAICT from the FCC certifications database, NO WIFI RADIO, least of all any Atheros-based radio, has been certified under the SDR rules. The rules simply *do not apply* in WiFi space.

(Now, it is likely that the rules in Europe are stricter than in the United States. Still, Atheros will send you a copy of the U.S. SDR rules if you ask about the regulatory issue.)

Incidentally, every single WiFi radio in existence is
software-defined under the FCC's broad definition. Some of them nevertheless have open-source drivers that let you adjust the tuning and power control by getting directly at the hardware. See, for instance, the open-source ADMtek drivers for BSD and for Linux. I wrote the former driver, and I didn't have to break U.S. law to do it. And the manufacturer supports new development on the driver.

Finally, I will just add that the FCC has traditionally not required even a modicum of tamper-proofing on Part 15 devices. Their long-standing position has been that a device need only protect consumers from *inadvertently* or *casually* tuning a channel they're not entitled to use, or setting an illegal power level, in order to qualify for certification. Furthermore, the FCC seems to be aware that determined radio hackers with malicious mis-use in mind will not be stopped. Hacking a wireless driver for illegal channels or transmit powers is not the "casual" or "inadvertent" consumer activity that the device certification process is designed to prevent.

I think the real reason Atheros and other WiFi chipmakers are not opening things up is that they want to protect their intellectual property. Someone at Atheros has told me that is a key reason. I doubt that there are major innovations in the software interface (register set, descriptor ring format, blah blah) that give deserve protection because they give them a competitive advantage, but this wouldn't be the first time that a chipmaker saw it that way.

You might ask, why does it matter whether the software interface concealed by the HAL is opened up? First, so that radio experimenters and open source developers can innovate with WiFi at their own pace and according to their own agenda. Second, because the HAL documentation is virtually non-existent, and nobody is going to write it. Third, (Theo will appreciate this) so we can audit the code (which runs w/ all the privileges on your Linux/BSD system!) for bugs. Fourth, so that we can fix the bugs---and there *are* bugs.

hardware...

[torrents]

once there are more people/companies that only buy hardware with oem open source drivers companies will rush to get their own drivers ready

Re:It's called strict liability

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability

In the US it applies to anyone making a product for sale. And yes, if it is directly related to the product and the product malfunctioned, the maker is liable. Intentional misuse doesn't create strict liability I believe, but who knows these days.

Of course something is horribly wrong with the legal system in the US. Whatever happened to being personally responsible for the stupid shit you do?

Re:A minor "nice to have" after solving real probl

[Anonymous Coward]

You got it backwards, someone should write a ntlinux subsystem for running linux drivers under NT. Every system I've installed windows on, I then had to track down drivers to make it work. Often this included prying the heatsync off some chip so I could read part numbers and google them.
By contrast I install linux or *bsd it nearly always just works. The one time I can recall it not working the kernel printed a helpful message "Note, this device is expirimental, see this website...". The web site basicly told me to return the hardware if I could, but they had an updated version that might have worked.

DRM?

[tepples]

ATI should include the DRM headers that they built their driver against in their source package

Doesn't ATI's contract with Macrovision and DVD CCA prohibit that? Otherwise, people could open up the TV out and play DVDs without the video copy protection signals.

Re:DRM?

[cortana]

I don't think so--the missing header files can be copied accross from the Linux source code. It's just a pain having to do so to compile the drivers, when these files should have been included with the drivers in the first place.

DRM in the Linux kernel?

[tepples]

the missing header files can be copied accross from the Linux source code.

Do you claim that the Linux source code has header files that deal with Digital Restrictions Management? I didn't know Linus was in bed with Hollywood. Or does DRM stand for something else?

Re:DRM in the Linux kernel?

[cortana]

Indeed, http://lxr.linux.no/source/drivers/char/drm/drm.h :)

elucidation for redleg

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm glad to hear you're not quoting from trade rag, journal or online posting. From that we can conclude that you're simply don't understand what is being discussed yourself. The fact that you claim to be an active voting participant in IEEE 802.11 makes me wonder then why you appear to have this mental obstacle between distinguishing, 802.11 "REQUIRE"ments, and FCC regulations.

As you should know the FCC considers the spectrum used by 802.11 devices as UNLICENSED. I'm glad that 802.11 has some requirements so that vendors who make devices to that spec can interoperate, but that's a whole different ballgame. If I have my 802.11a/b/g card running and get stomped on because of a cordless phone, or a microwave, the FCC doesn't care - it's unlicensed. Moreover, they like this, and look to promote it: "While our rules have been successful in encouraging innovation, we need to review them to eliminate unnecessary impediments to new technology." (that's a quote from this FCC presentation: FCCpowerpoint). In other words, if there are any other boundaries people are coming across in the unlicensed spectrum, they want to remove any regulations so that more innovation can occur.

As a counter point of where the FCC does incur its wrath, one need not look far (though this is diverging from the discussion about vendors licensing firmware binaries, you seem really confused, so I'll make this excruciatingly pablumized). Licensed spectrum is a whole different ball of wax, the FCC went and raided a local pirate radio station in Santa Cruz with a bunch of federal agents not too long ago, who were operating a LPFM station (37W for what it's worth, paltry compared to my 300W microwave oven, or even lightbulb usage). RAIDED. Armed, dragging hippies out of bed at GUNPOINT because they were running an FM radio station. Guess what is never going to happen in the unlicensed spectrum (802.11 space) because some hippie is using it? Ok, I'll let you answer that yourself, but while Atheros, TI, Intel, whomever might have a hissy fit, it won't be the FCC. I can understand why people in IEEE 802.11, and the chipset vendors might want things closed up so that people don't go making non-compliant devices, or firing 802.11 framing over different wavelengths. That would make things like spendy frequency convertors harder to sell, and if you had a bunch of easily made 802.11 jammers written in software, just think of the pain in the ass that would be (e.g. Mike Shiffman's unreleased, but demo'd at core02 "omerta" tool developed with libradiate. Oh, btw - Mike didn't need any funky firmware hacking to write omerta, it turns out there are many easier ways to break 802.11 without resorting to mucking with individual vendor hardware implementations, who would have thought? Oh, real security experts two years ago.

You need to stop deceiving yourself or maybe you need to stop believing other supposed experts' lies. There's no SDR, firmware binary, or driver HAL binary that could be tweaked to a level of hardware that the FCC might really be concerned about when it comes to unlicensed spectrum.

This smart AC also explains things well, and doesn't seem confused about differences between FCC regulations and IEEE committee protocol requirements or vendor agendas as you do. Perhaps you need to get out more.

Re:SDR FUD

[African Dyoung]

(Here that is again, this time not anonymously. Anonymous comments seem to score really low.)

It is not true that WiFi card makers are not allowed, under U.S. regulations, to expose the transmit power control, tuning, etc., to the user. People who say so, even people at Atheros who say so, are mistaken or lying. (As one FCC lawyer told me in the mealy-mouthed language of Washington, D.C., "it sounds to me like they are being less than forthright.")

And yes, I am quite aware of the FCC's SDR rules. Why, I have even read them, which is more than virtually anybody else who is commenting has done! A maker certifies their product under the SDR rules *at their own option*, and then (and only then) do they accept certain strictures (they have to take measures to protect against tampering) in exchange for a streamlined re-certification process. AFAICT from the FCC certifications database, NO WIFI RADIO, least of all any Atheros-based radio, has been certified under the SDR rules. The rules simply *do not apply* in WiFi space.

(Now, it is likely that the rules in Europe are stricter than in the United States. Still, Atheros will send you a copy of the U.S. SDR rules if you ask about the regulatory issue.)

Incidentally, every single WiFi radio in existence is software-defined under the FCC's broad definition. Some of them nevertheless have open-source drivers that let you adjust the tuning and power control by getting directly at the hardware. See, for instance, the open-source ADMtek drivers for BSD and for Linux. I wrote the former driver, and I didn't have to break U.S. law to do it. And the manufacturer supports new development on the driver.

Finally, I will just add that the FCC has traditionally not required even a modicum of tamper-proofing on Part 15 devices. Their long-standing position has been that a device need only protect consumers from *inadvertently* or *casually* tuning a channel they're not entitled to use, or setting an illegal power level, in order to qualify for certification. Furthermore, the FCC seems to be aware that determined radio hackers with malicious mis-use in mind will not be stopped. Hacking a wireless driver for illegal channels or transmit powers is not the "casual" or "inadvertent" consumer activity that the device certification process is designed to prevent.

I think the real reason Atheros and other WiFi chipmakers are not opening things up is that they want to protect their intellectual property. Someone at Atheros has told me that is a key reason. I doubt that there are major innovations in the software interface (register set, descriptor ring format, blah blah) that give deserve protection because they give them a competitive advantage, but this wouldn't be the first time that a chipmaker saw it that way.

You might ask, why does it matter whether the software interface concealed by the HAL is opened up? First, so that radio experimenters and open source developers can innovate with WiFi at their own pace and according to their own agenda. Second, because the HAL documentation is virtually non-existent, and nobody is going to write it. Third, (Theo will appreciate this) so we can audit the code (which runs w/ all the privileges on your Linux/BSD system!) for bugs. Fourth, so that we can fix the bugs---and there *are* bugs.

Prepare to be knifed

[tepples]

[Target shooting] is practise for either hunting or shooting humans. According to soem it is also fun to do.

Soemtimes a state has to train its citizen militia to shoot humans.

The intention of the weapon itself is still to kill, the intention of the user may be to stop soemone else indeed.

The intention of the DeCSS itself is still to copy, the intention of the user may be to watch soemthing indeed.

in a society where firearms are commonplace, an attacker is a lot more likely to use one against you because an attacker is a lot mroe likely to expect you to have one. I prefer fighting an attacker that doesn't have one

In a society without civilian ownership of firearms, guns don't kill people; kitchen knife marksmen kill people.

Re:Prepare to be knifed

[SillyNickName4me]

> Soemtimes a state has to train its citizen militia to shoot humans.

Maybe, but if you just go look around, cirizen melitia cause way more problems then they ever solved.

There is the often used arguments of melitia beign protection against tyranic government, but just go look at places where melitia actually fight the local government, and now look at tyranic governments that were overthrown in the last 5 decades. You will find that whenever melitia played a role in overthrowing such a government, the resuklt was a state ogf civil wwar for years if not decades to come.

Sorry, but if you want this argument to hold, you will have to come up with something better then just stating it. FOr now the argument looks at best doubtfull, and without any better substance, it looks pretty invalid.

> The intention of the DeCSS itself is still to copy, the intention of the user may be to watch soemthing indeed.

No, the intention of DeCSS is to read data, and on its own it is not capable of more then that. If you use that for copying or viewing is an entirely seperate issue.

Why are vendors downloading firmware, anyway?

[Animats]

Why are vendors downloading firmware, anyway? Device vendors used to just preload firmware into some form of non-volatile memory at the factory. If the firmware has to be downloaded, it takes extra steps to get the device going. Either you have to download it from some "install disk", which is a pain, or your have to get Microsoft to put it in their Windows distros.

The latter would be a huge pain unless Microsoft was very cooperative. It's worth finding out just how that arrangement works.

(One could make a conspiracy in restraint of trade argument, but under Bush and Ashcroft, antitrust enforcement is out to lunch, so that's hopeless.)

Re:Why are vendors downloading firmware, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Vendors download firmware for one simple reason, to get around bugs in their silicon - they can bring a product to market that works much quicker by getting something in place and working (in the case of G before the spec is even finished) and then working around what wasn't right in firmware, such as an fpga (or completely in an fpga). The point is that
the firmware file is essentially necessary to make the piece of hardware work correctly - It lets them get to market quicker without having to redo their hardware over piddly little problems. This effort is not (unlike all the clueless above would indicate) and effort to get vendors to release source code for this, or an open source driver - it is *ONLY* about letting the firmware binary be redistriubuted, so that you *CAN* write a driver for it. Without the firmware binary, the card is a bunch of useless silicon and metal.

Re:Why are vendors downloading firmware, anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Device vendors used to just preload firmware into some form of non-volatile memory at the factory.

By downloading the firmware, the extra cost of a non-volatile chip is avoided.

Re:A minor "nice to have" after solving real probl

[Anonymous Coward]

ndiswrapper does work ya know