Slashdot Mirror
Intel Accused of Being an "Open Source Fraud"
Binary-Blob writes "Kernal Trap has an article up in which some key OpenBSD developers accuse Intel of being an open source fraud. The issue stems from the prevalence of firmware 'blobs' in open source projects, and OpenBSD's reluctance to use them unless they are distributed freely and without restrictions. Leading project creator Theo de Raadt offers that Intel should follow the example of other companies in the market: 'Intel must do this firmware grant in the same way that Adaptec, Atmel, Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Cyclades, QLogic, Ralink, and LSI and lots of other companies have granted distribution firmware to be used by others.' He concluded by requesting that the open source community contact Intel to help get them to change their policies"
Intel is lying...
Intel -- Only "Open" For Business
Comment from previous story suggesting the kerneltrap article:
Better article on the story
Yeah, Intel will just love that.
If you look at the supported hardware list, there are similar comments in there about Adaptec RAID controllers. Theo is definitely not one to be timid, and it shows even in innocuous places. That said, if a little boat-rocking can get Intel to listen to the OOPs, so much the better (contrast Intel's behavior with that of, say, IBM, or even SCO).
Intel -- Only "Open" For Business
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
While it may seem backwards that Intel, a hardware company, would be loath to release the specs of their hardware so that third parties could develop drivers for it (essentially for free), you have to also assume that the specification itself provides significant insight into some "whiz-bang" hardware implementation that Intel doesn't want to be common knowledge. What seems strange is that de Raadt is calling for BSD-licensed "binary blobs". I can't imagine why he would want that in favor of BSD-licensed code, or better the hardware interface specs.
It's a little bit frustrating that Intel, the de facto standard when it comes to PC hardware, would let its products flounder on certain platforms. Not that there's this huge market for OpenBSD users (it's dying, of course), but the effort involved in keeping the driver off the platform seems to be no greater than allowing the OpenBSD developers to have a crack at it.
If I weren't a Windows user whose hardware is fully supported, I'd be right there with those guys. There's really no excuse for this sort of behavior.
Seriously, look at who we're talking about. "Shaming" Intel into doing anything is about on a par with "shaming" MS into doing anything. Simply because the numbers don't add up. This is how I see this going:
The OpenBSD Userbase: Give us the hardware specifications or we'll take our business elsewhere!
Intel: There's two hundred of you, tops. Fuck off.
This is especially true since --correct me if I'm wrong-- these cards already work in Linux.
Of course, it's also obvious that Theo's "unique" brand of diplomacy does nothing to advance his case.
He has no real leverage to speak of (not when it comes to anything the siez of Intel, at least!); I realistically think he has a chance of pulling this off.
"Just download this firmware blob" is one level, then "just load this microcode". If you're using a Xilinx FPGA running a downloadable CPU core, should that be treated as yet another CPU (ie a sealed blob) or should the downloadable core be considered firmware/microcode? As we get more and more interesting hardware, the boundaries are only going to get more blurred.
Even regular CPUs have an interface (the instruction set etc) and their inner workings are sealed from the software developers.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
The problem is that much of the smarts in these devices is actually implemented in the software driver, and so the driver is part of intels "value proposition" and to give that away whould be a big gift to the Chinese low-cost copycat manufacturers - otoh not that useful to users, who get the driver if they buy the device and don't need it otherwise.
The answer is for Intel to define a "dumb" driver that just drives the hardware and doesn't include any smarts. They can document this and open it up with impunity since it won't reveal enough for the copycats to use. The open source community can then implement their own version of the smarts under the open development model, which is exactly how they do all their oither software.
The other problem with the above is that by documenting the low-level interface, Intel would be sanctioning the open driver effort. And if the open driver is unreliable for example while in beta, it might look bad for Intel. They would need to manage customer expectation carefully.
In general I find devices that need substantial help from the CPU to be flaky and slow. In the long run I think we will come full circle and return to all devices having their own smarts internally and very simple standardised interfaces to the CPU just like the original IBM PC.
The RSS for this story includes an AMD ad. Seems wrong to me.
do !
Or we'll call you really, really, really dirty names.
There, however, seems to be a small hole in the plan
From 1998, this article describes how Intel was eager to have Linux support UDI, the Uniform Driver Interface.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then, but UDI seemed to get submerged.
http://lwn.net/1998/0924/
Sorry, I didn't quote the URL in the parent post (so slashdot removed it).
Sorry, I don't get it: OPEN drivers are good for manufacturers.
;-).
Their products get good support, and good drivers written by others; and they also get more sales without spending money in marketing (unless your product is a mess; if that's your case, you've got a different problem
mootion.com - Never underestimate VCs stock options (was: Web 2.0)
Disagree. TdR is acting as prosecutor in the court of public opinion.
Conviction at the cash register could positively affect other notorious outfits like ATI and nVidia.
I rather prefer TdR's "don't be a jerk" campaign to RMS's "your thinking is false: I shake my fist at you and call you 'unethical'" approach.
Possibly more a stylistic difference than anything else, but technical folks seem to make screechy evangelists, and do better to cleave to the pragmatic angle.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There are two pieces of software here: the driver (which runs on the host), and firmware (which runs on the card). Theo wants freely redistributable firmware (which can be binary-only for all he cares), and documentation to write a free driver (which definitely must NOT be binary-only). Try not to get confused: He's not asking for free (as in freedom) firmware (though it would be nice), and he's not tolerating binary blobs that run on the host.
http://outcampaign.org/
As a user of Alyson Hannigan's film products, I demand that she must give me open access to her networking wetware. I represent thousands of nerd, all of whom want this access, and I am prepared to act as a gatekeeper and distributor, conditional only on being given first access rights. I expect this demand to have every bit as much success as Theo's.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A new slashdot record - the *first word* of an article summary is misspelled! Congratulations!
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
The danger of blobs is that they may contain a bug which could affect security. Worse, it might even contain spyware. Security being one of the chief concerns of the BSD crowd, why wouldn't TdR want to be upfront, honest, and open about what's in the blob?
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
OpenBSD want to distribute firmware along with the OS under an acceptable license. They are not asking for the source
code of the firmware. Intel are instractible here, so owners of Intel wireless devices needs to personally accept a license
before downloading the firmware. As an example: http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php
As for open source drivers: OpenBSD wants hardware documentation, not a Linux driver, so that they can write their own drivers.
Intel claims that they are open source friendly and gives out documentation, but the last is clearly a lie since OpenBSD had to reverse
engineer several Intel wireless chipsets.
Giving the appearance of beeing friendly to open source, while not beeing so, is the latest fad in business. Intel is an example
of this fad.
If it was, it'd be a DUPE.
:)
And we all know there are no dupes on Slashdot.
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Theo de Rat has issue with $VENDOR. In other news: sky blue, sun hot, rain wet.
Didn't he try this sort of crap with Sun and USIII a few years ago?
Sadly, Theo's pissed off so many people that even if he asked nicly, companies would tell him to get bent just because of his history.
My server does love OpenBSD though.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Most sufficiently large "OSS Friendly" companies are MSFT users at heart. They cling to the OSS side of things usually just to drum up business. That Intel does this [???, they do? my ipw2200 driver works fine without clickthroughs...] is no big surprise really.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is SRAM to hold the microcode really that much cheaper than flash memory to hold the microcode, even when you figure in lost sales and tarnishment of the brand to users of alternative operating systems?
Downloading is dangerous to Man-in-the-Middle and Firefox-exploit attacks. That means that by downloading each time, it is easier to get malware firmware, depending on who you are according to google's database. And rumors have it that those cards have an entire CPU and their firmware can act as a computer inside the computer, steal data, etc.
Linux should stand by this.
Yea intel people, i mean YOU.
You are fighting AGAINST the people you know ?
And this "the people" is not "people" in like "some and the others" or a socialist, communist obscure concept of "people".
This is THE PEOPLE, like in the declaration of independence, like in french revolution, like in WE ALL.
WE are the people. You are fighting against us.
Please mention a few names of persons or organisations that have fought against the people and won, from any point in history.
Silence ? you got my point i believe.
Read radical news here
That about sums it up nicely.
For Theo de Raat to have a "don't be a jerk" campaign is like RMS having a "shave every day" campaign.
POTD IMO
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
I'm pretty sure they just use the one built into emacs
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
by calling us names and telling us to fuck off, then every 6 months or so he sends a plea for help to /.
Well, Theo, please FUCK OFF
It's amazing to me how many people think bullying and mass-emailing is going to get a krufty old-school company like Intel to do ANYTHING. Even IBM isn't much of an exception, because they keep their proprietary and open source stuff carefully separated, and Sun's OpenSparc was already an open standard before they release the source code. These companies have markets much larger than open source users that don't care at all about open source!
In my opinion, the only way we're ever going to have truly open hardware is for us to develop it ourselves. In case you weren't paying attention, the Open Graphics Project already has hardware!!!
Yes, it's an early step in the process, but when volunteer open source development meets up with expensive hardware production, things tend to go a bit slowly. But engineering samples are currently undergoing tests, and the project members are working on test benches for it.
I want to slap anyone who even bothers to call Intel. It's a total waste of energy that they could be spending on a real organization that is really producing open source hardware, with schematics and source code online. Oh, and we're not talking about just releasing documentation on how their hardware works. Their entire hardware development process is out in the open and open source. Not only can you read about how this stuff works, but you can look at every level of detail, down to how the hardware is wired.
The only way we're ever going to get good graphics hardware for open source is to make it ourselves!
Oh, how I wish I had mod points. Well done. You got coffee up my nose on this one.
Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.
...does this mean a firmware blob can be decompiled and redistributed that way?
...oops, sorry, you also said "major." Nevermind... ;-)
How long before they declare a moratorium on The Mummy?
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
People think of Intel as some big, monolithic, organization, when it is far from that. Decisions are pushed down to a fairly low level. Ranting at "Intel" because of some perceived "policy" like this only points out that the ranter has done less than zero to understand how Intel is organized. Lobbying at "the company" will do no good. These decisions are ratified by dozens of general managers around the world, separately, without consulting each other or some non-existant corporate policy. That is, if it rises to the GM's attention.
Got a beef about a particular part? Identify the unit that makes that part. Identify the people that advise the GM of that unit. Lobby them.
Saying "Intel doesn't support open source" is like saying that "the person who makes global policy decisions for all distribtutions of Linux world-wide clubs baby seals".
In fact, Intel has released a lot of various stuff under BSD, and contributes to FOSS software under various licenses all the time. But, every project decides what is in their own best interest. Sometimes, they even get it right.
That's nice and all, but it's not the graphics hardware that remains closed...
What the heck is kernal trap?
How about this argument against Theo.
He is the FOX news of FOSS.
He is presenting this in the MOST inflammatory way possible and offering only one side of the discussion.
Here is a more balanced view of the problem.
Intel and many other manufactures of wifi cards use soft-radios. This allows Intel a great deal of flexibility in what frequencies and how much power the radios can use to transmit. If the FCC opens up a different band or if Intel wants to sell the card in a different country with different regs all they have to do is change some values loaded in the driver and your set.
The problem is that by changing some settings in the driver the device can be set to transmit in an illegal manner.
Just like the walkie talkies you buy at BestBuy can not have a knob that you can set so that it transmits on the police band wifi cards can not have a knob that you can set so that it transmits with too much power or on the wrong channel.
Intel's lawyers and or the FCC see giving out the hardware specs as putting a knob on those cards.
So Intel offers binary blobs to the FOSS community so that they can us Intel's wifi cards but not bring down the wrath of the FCC.
It isn't a perfect solution. The biggest issue is that the drivers only work for the X86.
The key here that in all likelihood Intel isn't trying to just be a jerk and or keep secrets from the FOSS community. There are legal issues involved.
However Theo loves attention and seems to like to "Stick it to the man" even when "the man" did nothing wrong.
Of course being reasonable and understanding doesn't get you on the front page of slashdot twice for the same story.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What OpenBSD is doing has worked with other companies. Until someone has hundreds of millions to put into your open source hardware, the OpenBSD's approach has much more likelihood for success useful to other people.
Intel 'must' do whatever it thinks is best for it's business and shareholders, not what some pissante developers demand it to do.
Wrong. Intel (or any other company) must do what it can to make more money for the CEO, as long as it is not illegal, or if it is, they don't get caught, or if they do get caught, the penalties are not greater than the rewards. Also, they need to maintain the appearance of maximizing shareholder value. Hope this helps.
Theo the Rat couldn't have written it better!
But what a pipe dream eh? Sure a bunch of hobbiests in their sheds can come up with some pretty cool designs, and even build some toys, but there is something they cannot do: mass production. Why? Well, take plastic moulding for example. It costs about $500,000 just to set up a non-specialized injection company just to make something as simple as a casing for plug.
Supply and demand. "The American Dream." All these things would stomp out open source hardware.
I know of several design tools btw, open source projects, that failed because - hmm - people didn't contribute to them - hmm - because they're so vertical they're effectively useless to the masses - hmm - and that's why open source initiatives - so noble and good willed - will fail because without a broad developer base and even broader consumer base its like putting lipstick on a chicken. [Pointless.]
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Apparently, he was wrong too, but that's irrelevant (people get things wrong all the time) to his uber-abrasive approach (most people don't behave like arseholes on the list).
So Theo is an abrasive cocksucker who is probably only in Open Source because he is unemployable? Well, that could explain his anger issues I guess.
Well, I have, but not on Slashdot.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Oh, there's a big suprise, the fucktard at Genesi doesn't like OpenBSD? Maybe next time the company could skip being idiots and liers and just give the documentation needed to make OpenBSD run on their hardware, and pay the man who does the work you guys hire him for. One would almost think that Genesi doesn't like OpenBSD for all the bad press there was about the company being run by idiots who hire OpenBSD developers to port to their hardware and then refuse to pay them. But no, that would be stupid, it was their own damned fault.
Genesi: 8'(
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
At least former have stated why they can't go Open Source. And even releasing specs (which are incomplete) would help little: DirectX 7/8/9 which requires special special software from Microsoft in driver.
Intel on other side always try to push aside Open efforts. Against Open BIOS supported amongst many vendors AMD - it has released EFI. EFI theoretically is also Open Source, but primirily designed to load binary modules from other (e.g. motherboard, BIOS, OEM) vendors. Feel the difference: open source BIOS v. open source stub to load BIOS of binary modules.
Unlike for CPUs, Intel didn't released a single spec for its networking products: wireless are just hot now, but wired adapters have the same fate. It's just Intel did released open source drivers people consult instead of spec. But again, e100/e1000 are rather exception. Intel also didn't release specs for their on-board graphics and ATA/IDE controllers - some people under NDA updated older open source drivers.
What I'm trying to say is that wireless drivers are not exception - Intel cares only about big customers (namely servers) and good publicity (namely benchmarks). Small fry (like F/LOSS vendors) is very low priority - ranting on Slashdot are even more down the list.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Nothing wrong with OpenBSD itself. Nice OS.
Just the guy in charge likes to piss on everything more than anything in the world.
There is nothing you can do right for Theo, be you Genesi or Jesus himself.
You misunderstand.
The OpenBSD group expects damn near perfection -- or at least the very best (that's all you can really expect, your best). Theo has his opinions and has probably learned that being nice about him got him NO WHERE. Everyone quickly forgets what OpenBSD does for the FOSS field. They get embarrassed.
I'm going to direct the next statement at the general FOSS crowd, not your specifically:
Fucking pussies because you get embarrassed. If you want instable machines, that's your perogative. I, personally, prefer my servers to be rock solid and not have weird shit happen because of blobs or some coder decided to half ass something.
The difference between Linux and OpenBSD is that Linux wants the popularity of Windows but stay free and have some cool apps. OpenBSD wants to be rock solid and never crash. Sometimes these goals are mutually exclusive. Sometimes they aren't. You choose your life, I'll choose mine. The _only_ time I use Linux is when I'm running something that isn't mission critical. Even then, I go LFS or Gentoo -- Slackware if I want to install it quick.
If I had a choice I'd go NetBSD, not Linux :)
You should look into the MegaSquirt (And Spark) independent engine management system. It is basically open source hardware; there are distributors who will sell you a prebuilt system for about $400, or you can get a set of electronics and instructions for about $250. It's a lot of money for a simple computer (and some not so simple sensors), but it's a bargain for an Engine Management system.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Theo is a "jerk" because dotcom being a jerks first. Jerks against consumers and OpenSource-community!