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Stallman Calls For Action on Free BIOS
Dolda2000 writes "Seeking to achieve 100% software freedom, RMS is now calling for action for a free BIOS. From the article: "The most uncooperative company is Intel, which has started a sham 'open source' BIOS project. The software consists of all the unimportant parts of of a BIOS, minus the hard parts. It won't run, and doesn't bring us any closer to a BIOS that does. It is just a distraction. By contrast, AMD cooperates pretty well." For reference, there are currently two projects for a free BIOS that I know of: LinuxBIOS and OpenBIOS."
An open-source BIOS is something I'd really appreciate having, especially with the big corporations moving towards their big 'Trusted Computing' platform. It's MY hardware and I'll runn whatever the hell I want on it, not what some mega-corporate conglomerate decides I should.
The problem with a motherboard BIOS is that it's tailored to the motherboard. Could the open source fratenity actually produce a workable product across a large number of motherboards? Would they produce something that works properly on all of them, instead of having modules that have been got to a state where they're good enough for the hacker creating them, but not Joe average on the street.
To be honest, if it's just a BIOS clone, I won't be interested anyway - wake me up when someone recreates OpenFirmware for the PC.
Stop whining? RMS not only instilled in us the ideal of free software but also provided gobs of it and with excellent quality yet! Move on? You mean accept the situation. You mean define what _we_ desire in terms of other's interests? Especially if those interests can hurt us all? I say respect yourself more and value your freedom.
Do you think your processor should contain open microcode as well? Even if you install free software on your mainboard BIOS, what about the firmware on your drives and graphics card?
While a wholly open-source machine would be great, it won't be a reality until we have technology that breaks the electronics mass production bottleneck (perhaps nanoassemblers). In the mean time you just have to decide which companies you're prepared to trust.
free-software religion aside, there are serious practical considerations to having closed bios code.
Bios support is an ongoing issue. Newer CPUs, RAM modules, hard drives, video cards are always coming out, as are bugs. With a closed source bios, support is cut after a certain length of time, and it is tough luck if any bios limitations exist after then. Oftentimes they don't address all the issues even while they're still making updates.
How many people are stuck with a motherboard they can't put a hard drive into, or can't do this or that, or are being bitten by a bug because of the bios. This happens all the time.
Also, bios setup screens are consistantly poorly designed, excessively limited, and written in "somebody set us up the bios" Engrish.
First of all, thank you for any and all Free Software you have written, under any Free Software license, copyleft or not.
Second, please don't conflate "commercial" and "proprietary"; many people make a living selling development of Free Software and support for Free Software, and confusing those two terms makes it more difficult for those people, just as you have encountered difficulty from managers that fear Free Software due to copyleft. Please have some sympathy for those people, and ensure that your statements do not undermine their use of GPLed software to make a living.
Finally, note that if you write a piece of software, you hold the copyright on that software; you may release it under the GPL, and you may also use it in proprietary products. You are in no way restricted by the license on a piece of software wholly written by you. The GPL simply prevents others from taking your software and making it proprietary, and prevents you from taking other people's GPLed software proprietary.
I'm sorry, but you're making a wrong assumption: this is not a zero-sum game. A zsg would require a situation where every gain on your opponent's side is a loss for you. Software development doesn't work that way. If you "invest" in creating new software that's freely shared you increase the pie, so to speak. By allowing other people to use your work and not requiring them to re-invent the wheel there is a net gain for the community, including you, since you benefit from others. This is a principle that might be hard to understand for someone who accepts the tenets of capitalism as the only ones possible (I do not wish to insult you, but many Americans seem terribly narrow-minded and uninformed in that respect, having been tought from childhood that everything related to communism is "bad" without ever going into detail).
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
Re: the abc program - there is no compulsion for a user of GPLed software to distribute anything at all. You are allowed, for your own personal (or internal company) use, to glue proprietary and GPLed code together in any combination you see fit - the only restrictions are on distribution of the code.
However if you plan to distribute someone else's GPLed code to any third parties, then all the code in there would have to be GPLed and the source code would have to be made available.
If YOU wrote all of b and c, then things are easier. Just put your code out under multiple licenses. You can GPL b and c and put it on a website AND license the same code to your company under a proprietary license for use in 'abc' - some companies, like Trolltech, actually make a living by producing GPLed code, and selling proprietary software companies the right to make derivative works of the same software under non-GPLed terms.
Hope this helps.