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Intel — Only "Open" For Business
Michael Knudsen writes, "Intel still refuses to work with open source projects such that they can provide their users with proper support for Intel's hardware products. As he has done before, Theo de Raadt once again asks users to take action by contacting Intel, telling them what they think of their current policy of not releasing hardware documentation and granting open source projects the right to distribute hardware firmware with their products. Failing to do so only harms users in the way that they risk having unsupported or malfunctioning hardware in their operating system of choice." Read more below.
It's really important that people understand that Intel is only trying to cooperate just enough to make people believe that they're open and doing the right thing. Don't fool yourselves: They are not.
What we need all users of open source software to do is contact Intel and let them know what you think of their current behaviour. If you run a big department and chose another vendor's products over Intel's because it doesn't work in your operating system, let them know, along with how many units they could have sold you. If you are an end user who has had problems when using Intel hardware because of poor support, let them know.
Let them know that their current lack of support will only harm them in the long run because you will be avoiding their products. Let them know that you want your hardware to work out of the box when you have installed your operating system of choice, and how Intel is preventing this with their lack of support.
Intel is not doing you a favor by requiring you to go to a website and download firmware for your hardware. You paid for the hardware, and Intel is thanking you by making it difficult for you to use it. Let Intel know what you think of this.
It's really important that people understand that Intel is only trying to cooperate just enough to make people believe that they're open and doing the right thing. Don't fool yourselves: They are not.
What we need all users of open source software to do is contact Intel and let them know what you think of their current behaviour. If you run a big department and chose another vendor's products over Intel's because it doesn't work in your operating system, let them know, along with how many units they could have sold you. If you are an end user who has had problems when using Intel hardware because of poor support, let them know.
Let them know that their current lack of support will only harm them in the long run because you will be avoiding their products. Let them know that you want your hardware to work out of the box when you have installed your operating system of choice, and how Intel is preventing this with their lack of support.
Intel is not doing you a favor by requiring you to go to a website and download firmware for your hardware. You paid for the hardware, and Intel is thanking you by making it difficult for you to use it. Let Intel know what you think of this.
Failing to do so only harms users in the way that they risk having unsupported or malfunctioning hardware in their operating system of choice.
So we get unsupported or malfunctioning hardware with our operating system of choice, or we get supported and functioning hardware with a malfunctioning operating system. cool.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
Intel, AMD, etc. - are all unnecessary, if they won't play nice, they should be replaced with open source hardware.
For more info, try "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opencores" - as the opencores.org site appears to be down.
I couldn't agree more with the goal here, but the approach seems a bit unproductive. I refer to the parts like this:
James is a big fat liar
(It's in TFA, believe it or not.)
This is no way to get the other side to play nicely with you.
I tried to keep it short and to the point, my email to them read:
Subject: Linux Wireless Firmware Distribution
I was very happy to hear that Intel is working with the community to
ensure that G965 graphics will work out of the box under Linux.
I am very sad to hear that Intel isn't doing the same for their wireless
products WRT freely distributable firmware.
I am a developer in the Computing Services department at a 30 thousand
plus student university. Community enabled Linux support is a huge
factor in the purchasing decisions of our department.
It should be noted that Intel manufactures the only technologically-current graphics processor which can claim to have open source drivers, and then Intel series of gigabit ethernet NICs is by far the best choice for use with Linux. Intel's wireless chips, the subject of the article, are not completely open but are rather more open than some of the competition.
I'm not sure how to respond to this one without getting downmodded into the pits of hell, but here goes...
This article was very scant on what exactly intel isn't supporting. All it says is some blurb about requiring folks to download firmware before they can use their OS of choice on intel hardware.
WHAT HARDWARE ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
CPU? Chipset? NIC? Router? Switches? What.. What the hell are you complaining about? Bios updates for Motherboards?
I hate to bitch, but when you get some pretty good in depth stories rejected for lame hoopla like this, you get mad.
--toq
Are we talking firmware or drivers here? I know that some "good" hardware vendors help out by giving the specs for their devices, but I didn't know that they also open-source their firmware. I thought the "firmware blob" is not specific to any operating system -- that's why you need the OS-specific driver in between.
:)
Any device firmware is part of the overall BIOS whole, right? Are those open-source? (Even OpenFirmware?) Do distro vendors really need the whole firmware code, or just the interface details (i.e. the specs)? Somebody please clarify
Could someone with good writing skills come up with a template for said email? Thanks.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Intel's behavior won't affect the market one way or another. As a whole, the market is barreling towards an open source model. If Intel opens up, that's great. If they don't, it won't matter because someone else will enter the market that's willing to do so. The market will follow the demand, with or without Intel.
I dont totally understand whats going on here. What does intel stand to gain from refusing to publish hardware documentation? The article seems to imply that they are doing something shady and sneaky so that they can make more money but I dont see how this is to their advantage in any way. How do they stand to gain by having people writing software without proper documentation? I would think this would hurt them if anything. Can someone please enlighten me? Although I am ill informed on this issue, calling someone you are trying to influence a "big fat liar" and publishing anothers personal email so that they can be spammed hardly seems like a good idea.
You'd have to be an insider to get the documentation.
I demand the Cone of Silence!
One of the complaints many of /.'s armchair coders have about the BSD license is that any company could come in and close source it. But *BSD (especially OpenBSD) is aggresive about not allowing closed source drivers, an accepted fact of life in Linux land.
If you compare Intel to other motherboard, chipset, or processor manufacturers, you'll find they arguably have better documentation and support for end-user and IT people than any of their competitors. They also are one of the only manufacturers I've seen to use open-source projects like FreeDOS and ISOLINUX. In their server lineup they support Linux as much as anyone.
Since I'm not a developer I can't speak from a developer's perspective, but there seems to be a liking in this community to paint Intel with a brush of "evil tight-fisted corporation" when they're actually one of the few who act like they care.
While I actually think TFA is virtually useless, I understand that people want better wireless support for their various open source OS's. Intel's drivers for this are really quite open when compared to most others, but if you want drivers that are more open than Intel's, choose ones with the RT2400, RT2500, RT2570, and RT61 chipsets by RaLink. The drivers were open-sourced last year and have progressed quite well. Find more info at http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main _Page and http://sourceforge.net/projects/rt2400.
Put identity in the browser.
There's 95% of the universe ruled out right there, and like intel gives a rats ass about whats left
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/
but obviously not enough for *BSD
Dear Intel,
I am humble Nigerian prince with a great wealth of BSD users in a locked-out community...
Aw, shucks.
Copy everything in italics below:
All you motherfuckers are gonna pay. You are the ones who are the ball-lickers. We're gonna fuck your mothers while you watch and cry like little bitches. Once we get to Santa Clara and find those Intel fucks who are making us go online for firmware updates, we're gonna make 'em eat our shit, then shit out our shit, then eat their shit which is made up of our shit that we made 'em eat. Then all you motherfucks are next.
Love, the Open Source Community.
Ah I see I get modded as trolling when OSS had contributed so fucking much to chip and board design for intel and yet another OSS advocate sounds off about their perrty grievances when others have done the work for them.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Intel is clearly not a software company, and likely never will be. Most employees there do not understand or think beyond the hardware level, even after supposedly switching to a 'platform' company in 2006. The few managers at Intel making software decisions have little knowledge of open source or its benefits. Ultimately, like most companies, every decision is driven by dollars and it is not easy to show significant revenue loss by keeping driver source closed. The current level of Linux support is probably the best you will see for a long time, and might decrease as head count reductions continue into 2007.
http://kerneltrap.org/node/7184
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Intel manufactures the only technologically-current graphics processor which can claim to have open source drivers
Not so. I'm using brand new Matrox G550 PCIe graphics cards in my servers, and they're running the 100% open-source drivers that come with Linux. I didn't even need to use the Linux driver sources that Matrox supply on their website.
And furthermore, these cards and their open-source drivers run 3D apps without a hitch, although they're not fast compared to ATI and nVidia of course. (Not bad for fanless cards though.) Matrox also provide a HAL accelerator binary blob, but it's not needed in an open-source system.
So, Intel doesn't provide the only technologically-current graphics cards with open-source drivers.
Whereas Matrox does have one *totally exclusive* claim to fame: in addition to open drivers, the G550 PCIe cards are the only ones that will run in PCIe slots of fewer than 16 lanes (16X), and hence are the only ones that work with archetypal "server" motherboards that tend not to have 16X PCIe slots.
Upon the launch of the pentium D, some intel spokesperson was talking about how that chip somehow encorporated hardware based infrastructure for DRM.
Microsoft's requirements for vista incorporate all sorts of DRM support requirements and requirements for hollywood approval of components.
The latest intel 64 bit lines are supposed to work with microsoft's software to prevent use of debuggers and other program modifications (such "malware" as the windvd patch to allow DVD-A ripping) through encorporation of "non executable" memory/register sections.
Granted I'm no einstein on the subject.. but wouldn't providing explicit documentation for such features allow OSS communities to write new firmware for vista to gut it of it's magical DRM capabilities?
I'm not saying it's not underhanded, anticompetitive, and just downright mean, but through this lense the lack of documentation to those whose licensing policies are directly opposed to the concept of NDA's their stance makes absolute sense.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Even being someone that used to be on the inside, finding the right person was a joke. The problem isn't that intel doesn't want to help. It's that if they try to help it will show exactly how un-organized they really are.
Your argument makes total sense; Let's try it with something you can understand, like bread.
Theo: "it would be really good if MrBread would tell us how to open the packet for the bread we bought"
You: "stupid Theo, you didn't bake the bread, why should you be allowed to open the packet you _paid_for_?".
Theo is not taking this from the point of view of someone who wants to make free wireless devices which compete with intel. He is being a paying customer and asking to be allowed to use the product he / his users bought. That shouldn't be too complex.
"I'm using brand new Matrox G550 PCIe [matrox.com] graphics cards in my servers, and they're running the 100% open-source drivers that come with Linux."
I'm using Matrox Parhelia card that was released several years ago. Still no working drivers! Drivers are closed binary drivers and the installer is a really messy piece of software that does not work on 85% of the cases. Just read Matrox Linux forum.
No, that's not it. The problem here is similar to the problem with winmodems: so much of the "intellectual property" is in the driver that the manufacturer is afraid of giving it away. The result is a closed-source driver. We will see more cases like this in the future.
The DRM thing (TCPA) is actually an open standard, not a secret. The security it provides is not through the obscurity of methods and algorithms, but through the obscurity of the secret keys embedded in the TCPA chip. Modifying software is not enough to work around it.
From: Cal Paterson To: majid.awad@intel.com, peter.engelbrecht@intel.com Date: Oct 1, 2006 1:06 PM Subject: Intel Firmware for the Wireless chips As an OpenBSD user and "Intel Wireless PRO" owner, I would like you to release your firmware for the "Intel Wireless PRO" chipset. I have an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad that uses this chipset, and I am unable to use it without the binary blob firmware you provide. You often say at conferences that you are committed to Open Source/Free Software, and that you release sourcecode to that effect, but often times you fail to release critical code, or even documentation that would make it possible for the community to re-create that code. At the Open Drivers Summit, James Ketrenos said: "If you need to keep IP closed source (for example some whiz-bang algorithm), document the hardware sufficiently that the community can provide their own." This is a fine statement, but it would probably be more meaningful if Intel would actually do so. The wpi driver for OpenBSD is currently suffering for lack of documentation from Intel. Lies and double standards are the currency of your commitment to Open Source/Free Software as it is. However, this is a issue that is easily solved. Release the documentation for this chipset (or, even better, the original code).
I work for some company developing wireless firmware for our ( completely unrelated ) product. Opensourcing the firmware or HW specs below it is not going to happen, ever, by any company. The reason is that wireless devices must comply with wireless standards. The firmware plays an important part in creating this compatibility. Opening the HW specs would mean that the original company would have to support some random hacker "optimizing" the algorithms in firmware to work better with his scenario forgetting other features that he does not think really matter, but are necessary for the wireless devices working toghether. HW specs are not designed to be easy to understand. They are designed to kick ass in performance or save 0.001mm2 from the silicon area. Usually the savings in silicon area come with the penalty of the interface being "interesting" to say it nicely. Also the HW versions change quite often and HW bugs are worked around in firmware. The amount of work to document all the bugs for open source firmware writers would be humongous. There are not really that many people working with the firmware. Gaining complete understanding of how our own firmware works takes years for for any novice entering the team. Nobody from our team wants to get into scenario where we must try to understand tens of different versions of the firmware and what are the implications of running each of them. The published interfaces need to be - quite stable across HW revisions. - Must not be able to compromize wireless standards compatibility Open source can work with drivers, but never with firmware. This is life. Deal with it.
I will voice my opinion in the tried and tested way of consumer protesting. I will just not buy Intel for my OpenBSD box's.
I will buy hardware that has an open support commitment and prove those vendors right in there move.
I'm using an old Matrox G550 AGP and it does not work. The free drivers cause the hardware to emmit the wrong frequencies when using the second output (as DSUB is soldered to the first, the second output is my only choice). There are drivers without source from Matrox which make me able to use the output but are buggy like hell. At least they fixed this up to 5 min timeout at startup, but it still regulary shuts down and does not work untill a reboot every few months.
If anyone has any documentation how to get this work? (I already tried to fix it, but the free driver just magically writes some ports, and till it writes to the ports, all frequencies are correct) please!
Look, I'm all for hurting intel. I jumped ship to AMD after my second intel based machine. Why? Because the intel machine was to loud. I'd invested over $300 in trying to make the machine quieter, and it's still 10 times louder than my AMD system, which I wasn't even trying to make quiet. Not all company's are onboard with open source, but cut Intel some slack. It's like telling a guy whose under a lot of stress at work that he has to support his Mother's Brother's Aunt because she exsists. I've run many flavors of linux on my intel machines, and I've never had any problems with them. SuSE, Fedora Core 2 & 3, Mandrake LE2005 & 2006, and Ubuntu all ran fine on my Intel machines. So if you're talking about the fact that nVidia drivers are a pain because they aren't open source, well then, you're shooting the messenger, to speak. Perhaps you're not at frustrated with Intel, as you are with the other system compontents that require closed source drivers. I fail to see where the beef is.
Hey, we live in a country where the majority doesn't even believe in one's right to MARRY the person of one's choice... why on earth should we expect the (wholly reasonable, of course) freedom to run an operating system of our choice?
;)
Any American who isn't straight, and doesn't run Windows, is a deviant unamerican commie terrorist-sympathizer. Right? I mean, right???? Somebody back me up here.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
You have a graphics card on your server? Why?
He then asked me to create a new user so that I could put some data in a safe, place, but i made the mistake of making my new user an administrator -- as soon as I did this, it became impossible to log in as the old administrator using the standard XP login screen. It took me some googling to figure out what had happened, but once I understood what was wrong, and even though the fix would have been almost trivial, if I had the source code (turn off the check for a second user), the only available fix for me (given that my boss hates the old NT-4 login screen) was to reformat the drive and re-install the entire OS.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
It appears that the whole complaint is that Intel is trying to enforce a License and someone is complaining that you can't get something without a license so that they can distribute it. This is my whole complaint about the opensource community. They scream to the Heavens that everything should be free as if it is a basic human right. Intel is a for-profit corporation. I can't fault them for trying to enforce a licence on a product they designed and sold, a license with attempts to maintain the quality standards of their product.
One thing I've noticed in the US is the complete inability to separate religious ceremony from civil status. Here in Norway, we have a christian state church, but we cecognize gay partnerships. What does that mean? It means that we want to recognize the civil status whether they're christian, muslism, "heathen", interreligious, white, black, interracial, straight, gay or lesbian. Whether or not it is a valid "marriage" according to religious dogma or not is irrelevant to the state.
We've already had all the usual religious bickering about gay people holding positions in the church, priests refusing to conduct or recognize gay marriage and consider them all to be living in sin etc., and most gays have convieniently chosen to use the word partnership simply to avoid the whole flamewar. There's plenty other issues as well, but they are minor compared to the US. Certainly, gay partnership is accepted by almost everyone even within the church. All the disputes are about the religious connotations.
That is where I think the gays in the US have missed their target, distancing themselves from the religious issues. It is strange to me that a country with a state church can have a better separation between state and church than a country where the state and church is separate.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
It is now official. Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
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 "Oddball" De Raadt 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
See, this community bases everything off of a paradigm that everything ought to be free "as in libre". However, the current paradigm (which I admit is slowly shifting) is modeled around the though that information is worth money and power. Because there is secrecy surrounding the code that they use to guard their property, then they have control over how their property is used. They are able to make money off of it. This is their motive. This is how capitalism works.
They see releasing that information as a threat to their MO. They think that if they start handing this stuff out for free their turning into a bunch of commies. And even though this community knows that isn't true, it doesn't help using ad homonym attacks against them by calling them 'big fat liars'. It looks childish and immature.
As for emailing? I don't think they give hoot whether a few geeks boycott them because they don't get open source drivers, mostly because there will always be someone else who will buy their product without qualms. Only if someone like Dell dropped Intel for such reasons would they begin to notice. What would happen if Apple and HP dropped them too? Sure they would wake up. But you know why none of them will do that? Because, they operate under the same paradigm. And 99.99999999999% of their customer base doesn't care because (to them) it's irrelevant.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I work at UC Berkeley on ecological monitoring using wireless sensors. We have been collaborating with Intel Lab, Berkeley for the last 2 years and their wireless hardware, "motes", use an entirely open source OS/firmware: tinyOS. They made this a deliberate strategy, by collaborating with the university they get high quality fast developing firmware and they make the money on the hardware design. So far it has worked well for all of us. Intel is a big company. Not all of their divisions play badly.
...and most gun laws too, oddly enough, came about in the US from primarily racial segregation and minority oppression actions. Originally, marriage had nothing to do with the state, and originally all the states had laws like Vermont still has about firearms, pure second amendment. The marriage laws varied state to state and were weird, you could as "race" such and such only marry an identical race or a small variation/percentage. Now marriage laws are more closely tied to social engineering and business and government handouts and rights of inheritance and all sorts of strangeness.
THIS IS NOT ABOUT OPEN SOURCING THE FIRMWARE!
This is about (at minimum) allowing the firmware (which has the transmission restrictions!) to be freely distributable without the end-user having to go to some web site and clicking through a license.
The steps are:
The manufacturer doing the first two steps does not involved releasing the code.
Theo de Raadt is not asking for the ability to modify the card's firmware, just permission to redistribute it. So what FCCing reason does Intel have not to grant this permission?
Intel is not magical, and they are not special. Every other company allows redistribution of their firmware, and even intel does for their ethernet firmware. There is nothing special about the wireless firmware that you need to sign away your rights to distribute it, ask every other vendor of wireless chipsets.
I'd tell Intel that I didn't buy their hardware because there wasn't open source support for it, except that, in point of fact, I bought their hardware because there's open source support for it. Sure, it's a pain that Intel doesn't let distributions redistribute unmodified firmware, because it means that I needed a wired network connection to install Gentoo, but getting the ipw3945 to work was a matter of doing "emerge ipw3945" (there was more of a hassle getting the newer-than-mainline ieee80211 module built than anything to do with the firmware, which was downloaded automatically. I didn't even need to go to the web page myself and agree to anything). This was all substantially easier than using other wireless, where appearantly identical devices have entirely different and incompatible hardware inside, which claims to be exactly the same, except that the manufacturer's flaky Windows drivers detect the difference and do the appropriate totally different thing.
That isn't to say that I don't think that Intel should release specs (it's not like they're hiding anything, when they're releasing open-source drivers anyway; I think they justdon't have enough tech writers or something), or that I don't think that Intel should interact more with the open-source distributors of their drivers (it's a pain that they don't push for inclusion of their Linux wireless drivers in the kernel, do the necessary coding-style work, and use the regular kernel development methodology), or that I'm not impatient with Intel not yet having a stable i915 driver, or even that I think there shouldn't be BSD-coding-style drivers created for Intel hardware in addition to the Linux-coding-style ones. But really, I don't have any problem with Intel doing only as much as is actually necessary to give me a good experience with their hardware.
Given this behavior toward partners with a legitmate comercial need for docs, I can't imagine them changing their policy toward open source projects.
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
You jumped ship to AMD because the Intel machine was too loud? As far as I can tell, an Intel or AMD chip make absolutely no noise.
The worst thing about trying to deal with the open-source "movement" (as opposed to open-source users), is the tantrums coming from the people who fail to grasp is that their own choice to give code away does not create any moral imperative for anyone else to do likewise, nor does their wish to have documentation for a device create any obligation to the owner of that device to release said documentation.
My own company is developing a PCI express board for video compression, which several prospective customers would like to use in machines running Linux. If we decide that there are enough customers to justify developing a linux driver then we will do so, but whether or not we release the source code to that driver will be a business decision and it will not be decided by Theo, RMS, or any of their fans, no matter how vitriolic they may get.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Having never seen James Ketrenos, not even in pictures, I have no idea if he is fat or not. Maybe he's skinny and Theo is just trying to insult him. But if he says something that is false, and he knows it is false, then at least the liar part is true. Of course we may never know what he really knows. He could just be mistaken and skinny.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There is a slight disconnect between Intel and the OSS world. I have had a VERY VERY VERY good experience with Intel's OSS employees. I figured out a way to make an IDS load balancer using Linux, Policy Routing, and EBTables. I used Intel GigE NICS and had an extremely positive experience. I ran into a few snags but Intel's OSS paid resource was a champ. I was provided a 'special' version of the drivers and then was able to get back into high gear. You can check my prior posts, I give Intel a LOT of flack but I think this is one area where they deserve some kudos.
As always, very greatful to Intel and Net-Dev.
OpenBSD has no problem whatsoever with closed source firmware.
No one is asking for open source firmware. What OpenBSD wants is better documentation for the firmware and the right to distribute it with the OS without signing an agreement with Intel.
Read the damned article before typing ten paragraph responses to something that you imagined.
RaLink is the provider of the chips for most of the $10 generic Airlink wifi stuff sold at Fry's (see www.frys-electronics-ads.com) . If you're to lazy to go to Fry's, go to outpost.com .
If you arent a large enough customer, then you are just blowing hot air as they could really care less.
Not falting them, they have to weigh the options of the time/mone spent to help you out, relative to the revenue gained. PR of being 'nice' doesnt always bring home the bacon.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I know it's probably too much to ask of you, but read the fine article. He is asking for redistribution rights, not for the firmware to be opensource. In other words, he wants Intel to retain its copyright on the firmware, but wants to be able to distribute freely that firmware to users of open source operating system.
Thus, your argument about how difficult it is to program firmwares or why they shouldn't be opened because they would allow hackers to play with the transmission frequencies is dead on arrival because you are arguing a STRAWMAN!
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
An imperfect plan executed violently is far superior to a perfect plan. -- George Patton
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If you are having trouble locating #GNAA, the official GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA irc channel, you might be on a wrong irc network. The correct network is NiggerNET, and you can connect to irc.gnaa.us as our official server. Follow this link if you are using an irc client such as mIRC.
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The G550 (PCIe or not) is not technologically current, though. It's a re-spin of the old Toucan chip (in G400, G400 Max, G450) -- a Direct3D 6 era product. No TnL, no Dot3, let alone any kind of shaders. Only 32MB of video memory. (But yay EMBM! It rocked in all the three games.) Quake 3 Arena at low rez is about the limit for it...
Perfectly good for a server, though. You use the dual-head feature? (Very useful for many usage cases -- remember folks, they're not all headless web or file servers!)