Slashdot Mirror
Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an insightful interview with OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt, discussing their recent activism to try and open up wireless chipsets. In the interview, Theo discusses what has been accomplished so far, the difficulties involved, and why such efforts are important to all free and open source operating systems."
Since most Slashdot readers will not RTFA before commenting, let me clearly point out that this is *not* about wanting the companies involved to open up their source code for use by OSS. It is simply requesting that the existing firmware be freely distributable by OSS without onerous conditions.
For A.D.D. and no-RTFA Slashdot readers/commenters, let me repeat that this is simply about being able to freely distribute an already compiled (e.g. binary) version of the firmware. OpenBSD is *not* asking for the source code.
Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. But that doesn't help when you are loading a distro. If you *only* have a wireless connection, this is a chicken-or-the-egg problem. You can't go to the website to download the firmware because your wireless NIC won't work without the firmware. Yeah, there are many possible workarounds, but by simply allowing the firmware to be freely distributable without onerous licensing terms, the wireless NIC can work right off the bat.
Unless your foresight is amazingly shallow, or simply a Theo-hater, note that this will benefit *all* OSS, and not just OpenBSD.
--codguy
The people who buy OpenBSD CDs don't do it because they're locked in or forced to in any way. We do it because we want to support a high-quality operating system. Considering that OpenBSD has replaced several costly Windows boxes where I work, the $40 for a CD is inconsequential.
And, lest you forget, OpenBSD has a free-er license than Linux (don't get me wrong, I love and use Linux every day). OpenBSD's goal is getting high-quality software out there, not to free the world. You seem to be forgetting Theo's interview on Slashdot:
The licence on our code is pretty clear. We want vendors to use our code. We want commercial operating systems to ship with OpenSSH. Not shipping with an SSH varient causes great grief, and it is time that ends.
Same goes for OpenBSD. We would prefer if companies building commercial network appliances used OpenBSD, rather than writing their own operating systems. Typically, these companies are very comfortable with solving the problems within their application space. Yet, there is a history of these companies writing their own cruddy operating systems, and at the same time writing worse applications.
It would be better if routers, firewalls, telephone switches, fileservers, and whatever else used reliable components, designed by people who care.
So go ahead, use any parts of OpenBSD as parts of commercial systems.
[All chipsets] should be open. Really, it's very narrow-minded of the chipset manufacturers to not consider the possibility of people using F/OSS operating systems instead of propietary.
All chipsets should be open. Really, it's very narrow-minded of the chipset manufacturers to not consider the possibility of dust or humidity settling or condensing on the open raw chip. Plastic cases are there for some reason, ya know?
Now Open Cores would be great! But as long as we don't have a home chip manufacturing unit (say, like a printer or so), we won't be able to use the source code anyway (though some of us could find out about hidden functionality etc...).
What we do need now are open specifications, both electrical and functional: What do you need to write to Pins 3-29 and what does the result on Pins 30-35 mean? This kind of stuff ought to be open!
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
"He created the currently most distributed free operating system, did he?"
No, he created a kernel, he created a GPL licensed, monolithic and modular kernel.
Linux is _just_ a kernel
I'll have to stick by Theo on this one, there is a lot of whining about Nvidia binary drivers for their video cards, but that seems to be all it is, whining.
Theo is doing something about it, whether or not you agree with his cause, he is _doing_ something at least.
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You are being silly. Go read up on the definition of "derived work" and "linking". Then read the GPL very closely. You'll notice that the firmware of a PCI card doesn't even execute on the same CPU architecture, let alone in the same address space (the rule of thumb amout if you are "linking" or not). When you get done figuring that out, realize that because the firmware was independently developed outside of the Linux kernel, and it works completely independently of the Linux kernel, it's not a derived work. Thus it's pretty much in the free and clear of all GPL issues. The actual binary bits in the kernel you are free to change to your hearts content with full GPL rights.
That's why firmware can be inside of the Linux kernel now. Some people want to move it outside of the Linux kernel (for both technical and political reasons). The technical being, that you can upgrade the firmware without re-compiling your kernel, and it shrinks the size of the kernel to not have it statically compiled in. The political is that so dolts like you don't say "That's a GPL violation". It isn't. The firmware isn't a derived work, and it isn't a linking to a GPL'ed piece of code. It's just data as far as the kernel is concerned. Just like the C code that passes thru a GCC is just data. Yes technically speaking it is source code, but it's just data. It's just like saying, well in order to initialize this card, you have to write a "0x80" to this port to get it configured correctly. In this case, instead of a single byte, it could be a 10-64k chunk of bytes. It's the same thing. They are going to make it blazingly obvious by moving it outside of the source tree so it acts just like the GCC code does in every single way. Then we can finally be finished with this argument. That's why the 2.6 kernel is building all of the infrastructure so that firmware can be loaded from user space. Then as long as the vendors say the firmware can be distributed for free, it's all good (which is what Theo is attempting to make happen).
Even if the OpenBSD and Linux people got the source to the firmware GPL'ed, there's no way in hell they'd ship source you had to compile. You'd still get a binary distributed to you. That would require you to have a development tool chain for whatever language (compiler for the language, assembler for the target architecture, and possibly a linker for the object format). Some or all of which literally might not exist outside of the company. It's not like Adaptec is using an x86 OBJ from C source for writting it's firmware. They might, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out they use a PIC with a propriatry C compiler from an embedded vendor. That would be a dependency the Linux kernel folks wouldn't allow for building a kernel.
Kirby