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."
I don't believe a word of it.
FP!
The goal is not to get the company to open source their firmware, just to license it in such a way that it can be legally distributed with OpenBSD, an operating system that prides itself on being 100% free.
Wait a minute, this is coming from an organization that forbids people from sharing ISOs of their "official" CD set? Instead forcing people to pay $40 for an Official CD-ROM version of their OS?
I mean, I'm all for them charging money in order to support themselves, but don't call it 100% free. Call it, 97.1% free.
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.
George Bush is teh win!!!
I don't understand what companies have to lose by open-sourcing firmware or software that goes with hardware.
... right?
They make money on the hardware, not the software
"The idea being to let the vendors know that there is a large concerned user base that is going to decide how they will spend their money based on the vendor's willingness to work with open source software."
Not only for themselves, but in how they make recommendations for their companies... TI (and other vendors) may not care about that one extra unit sold, but they'll certainly be looking at the corporations that might purchase thousands of units.
Q: Mystic Elevator -- If the Collapsed Room, Secret Passage, Secret Stairs, or Revolving Wall lead to the Mystic Elevator, does the counter stay there even when the elevator moves?
Abby: You say that you have had counseling. Has your son? If the answer is no, urge him to get some and get his life in order. Should he refuse, make it plain that you will no longer tolerate his verbal abuse and again screen your calls. The longer you allow your son to cause you pain, the
longer he will do it. He's an adult, and you have suffered enough.
Q: Can all omen cards except for the Dog, Girl, Bite, and Madman be dropped, traded, or stolen?
Abby: I think sometimes God lets us know how it would feel to be without something we love without actually taking it away, to teach us to be more grateful.
Q: The Axe, Spear, and Blood Dagger all state "Roll x additional dice when making a Might attack with this weapon." Does this mean you don't get any bonus when you're defending aganst someone else's attack while carrying the weapon?
Abby: There is nothing "wrong" with you. You are not the only wife who has felt this way. What the Army failed to tell you is that there's a period of readjustment not only for the returning soldier, but also for the spouse who was left behind. The solution lies in communicating your feelings before you explode.
Q: Can the Toy Monkey attack multiple times in the same turn, if it is carried through several rooms containing monsters and/or explorers?
Abby: Yes, cybersex is cheating. When someone hides something from a spouse or partner, it's usually with the knowledge that the spouse or partner would disapprove. Now, I have a question for you: Why are you wasting your time with someone who sneaks around looking for other sex partners? Romances like yours don't have happy endings. Be smart. Get checked for STDs and call it quits with Vito.
Isn't there a problem here, that while a closed source redistributable binary is fine for use with *BSD, it cannot be linked into the Linux kernel because the GPL requires you to distribute source for anything that is so linked...?
...if only to see a pic of the guy who causes such a ruckus.
Otherwise, the interview is extremely tame. He alludes to the "corporate ways of Linux vendors", but doesn't give vent to any interesting rants.
De Raadt raises one interesting question, though, when he says, "in other cases we have had to resort to activism. An example of this was Qlogic...for a few years we did ship this code without being aware of the issue. But after a few mails to Art at Qlogic, and a threat to remove their code from our upcoming release, they decided to let us include the firmware in our operating systems."
The question is: how is this "activism"? He states that they used Qlogic SCSI firmware inadvertantly, and when asked to stop, threatened to comply with the request. That's "activism"?
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
Whatever one may think on Theo, I think that he is right here: firmware which cannot be redistributed by distribution are a *pain* for the users.
I hope that Linux&FreeBSD users will join this movement because the more users requests hardware-makers to allow redistribution of firmware, the better!
Also, I think that this movement should not be restricted to wireless HW, I have a speedtouch ADSL modem where there is a similar situation: firmware may not be redistributed.
This is very annoying when you want to install a distribution.. I think that Mandrake managed to get the rights to redistribute this firmware, but they shouldn't be the only one to have this right..
Too bad he's such an insufferable prick. (UltraSPARC III architecture crisis anyone?)
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Oh - I shot my load on all you bitch democrats so many times last night, I can barely feel deez nutz.
That's a typo, it is spelled "obituary".
The firmware that OpenBSD wants is the binary code that gets uploaded into the card and run on the card's onboard CPU.
Thet don't want to obtain that firmware's source. They want distribution rights to include the unchanged firmware in their open-source drivers. That firmware is already "free" to download from the web and extract, or extract from the Windows driver on the CD bundled with the card, but OpenBSD wants to cut to the chase and just have drivers that work first time from their install CD.
Whoda thunk it?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Firmware is NOT linked with the linux kernel, so the GPL "mere aggregation" clause applies. Obviously, this is MHO, and this has already generated a LOT of debian-legal discussion.
:-)
YMMV HTH
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
From a story linked in the article:
[Theo de Raadt] 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."
I honor the efforts of the OpenBSD projects and Theo de Raadt, but this is childish behaviour. I don't think one could deny that Linus does propagate the idea of free software. He created the currently most distributed free operating system, did he?
Speaking like that of the Linux crowd at whole is ignorant. I'd wager that most closed source hardware components where opened by previous Linux efforts, the project that actually initialized the wider acceptance of UNIX like operating systems we enjoy today by (unfortunately still limited) vendor support.
If Theo didn't split camps he might actually find cooperation with Linux developers.
Is that like the diebold machines in Ohio?
[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.
The OS is free. The official CDs aren't. They make their money on the CDs, so they ask people not to distribute ISOs so they can sell their official CDs. But it's not illegal to distribute your custom ISO.
Apparently their web site content isn't free either (cf. MicroBSD). But supposedly the entirety of the OS is (though there may be some non-free stuff in there as well, I'm not sure exactly what the deal was with MicroBSD).
to see people out there really pushing hardware co's to open up and increase their potential client base... you think this would be something they would undertake on their own...
Get your torrents...
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/1735
The only exception is if the driver was not developped specifically for Linux (ie somebody ported it) and then it's not considered a derived work. Otherwise any kernel code falls under GPL.
People who don't like that should use BSD instead. It has no such requirements.
I haven't read all that much about de Raadt...a few interviews mostly, I'll confess. What I have read though I've felt pretty positive about, myself. Yes, he's rather prickly/sensitive, and deeply strange, but those are two characteristics that are commonly associated with people who are abnormally intelligent.
;-)
;-)
It's true from most of what I've read that the BSD dev crew *do* seem to see themselves as one of the last holdouts of human intelligence. The thing is though, the evidence would tend to suggest that they're almost certainly correct in thinking that.
Have a look through bsd.ports.mk and its associated files (as one example) at some point if you don't believe me...I found myself being reminded of Wayne and Garth's reaction to Steven Tyler when I did. ("We're not worthy, we're not worthy!" etc)
It's made me think that the old crack about LSD and BSD is true...though not from the point of view of the BSD developers taking it themselves, but from the point of view of them being sufficiently intelligent that the rest of us would need to consume LSD in order to keep up with them.
What other proprietary software would also "benefit" "open source" operating systems? Since this is all being done in the name of convenience for the user, why not admit it and ship more software that the user might find convenient so the OpenBSD system is even more useful out of the box?
As much as the OpenBSD team cares about making software that commercial developers can build on (even to make proprietary derivatives), these proprietary firmware packages will not be available under such terms. There will be vastly different licenses for portions of OpenBSD--one license for each of the proprietary binary firmware files, and one license for the rest of the OS (the new BSD license).
When such firmware is built into the Linux kernel, that variant of the kernel becomes non-redistributable because one can't meet the terms of the GNU GPL (complete corresponding source code cannot be supplied). The OpenBSD system will remain redistributable (except for the oddity concerning distributing verbatim copies of the OpenBSD discs). And "open source" will again demonstrate its ability to trade away the practical idealism that built the free software community in exchange for convenience.
Digital Citizen
These sorts of issues illustrate why it's critical to consult the (rather incomplete) supported hardware lists. In addition, because the hardware lists can be vague and the vendors don't always provide complete information on the product, talk to someone who runs a similar setup. In addition, figure out what driver is used for your device and read the source code; oftentimes there will be comments about specific cards. Finally, see how long development has been taking place for a particular driver; the driver that's been around the longest may be the safest bet.
With regards to wireless cards, you shouldn't have any problems with Cisco or Motorola gear on OpenBSD.
Man, that's like Suffrage for Spoons, or something.
-truth
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
It's catering to what the proprietors want you to do--become more dependent on their products and work under their licenses. Ultimately, the copyright holder holds the power. In the Qlogic example, it was not any "threat" that gave Qlogic incentive to do what it did. de Raadt is trying to make this seem like OpenBSD held the power in this relationship. Qlogic realized that it had the opportunity to avoid a minor PR hassle and simultaneously not forgo sales of its hardware when it allowed others (including those ostensibly dedicated to "open"ness) become their buttress by distributing their copyrighted proprietary code.
What the OpenBSD team is doing is in line with the idea of gaining favorable cachet of "open source" to chase after technical convenience at the expense of a user's freedom to inspect, modify, and alter computer software to suit their needs. Proprietors know that users will give up their freedom if they never learn to value software freedom, and if they are provided with a frictionless path to doing what you want them to do. OpenBSD is working hard to build that frictionless path to becoming yet another proprietary software distributor.
Digital Citizen
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
I mean, most of us have mod chips, but will someobody please think of the children?!?!?
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
The OpenBSD concept is much larger than the source code. Conceptually OpenBSD is encumbered.
Could you ask in English?
In 802.11 and other Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum radio equipment, ALL frequencies in a broad spectrum are used simultaneously at lower power. The "Channel" is really a virtual channel, and not like the narrow band of Citizens Band spectrum that CB each radio channel uses. Instead, DSSS channels are different Spreading codes governing how the broad spectrum is encoded by the transmitter and then decoded by the reciever to distinguish signal from noise. The signal profile at different frequencies reinforce each other after decoding. Thus, baseband interference has a low statistical impact on the total S/N ratio.
When one 802.11 radio transmits, it uses ALL of the analog bandwidth that other radios on different spreading "channels" are listening to. When a listening radio is on a different channel from the DSSS transmitter, the resulting decoded signal is part of the background static called the "noise floor". Thus, the only thing you gain from operating an 802.11 radio outside of FCC defined channels is obscurity. 2.4GHz digital spread-spectrum phones do this.
More importantly, the 802.11 radio standard operates in a band of frequencies called the ISM band. It is UNREGULATED below certain transmission power levels. Screw with your spreading channels to your heart's content. However, if your firmware allows you to increase the output gain of the radio transmitter, then you may be able to run afoul of the ISM unlicensed operation specs, especially if ytou built your own yagi antenna...
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...