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Proprietary Blobs and the Pursuit of a Free Kernel
jammag writes "Ever since the GNewSense team pointed out that the Linux kernel contains proprietary firmware blobs, the question of whether a given distro is truly free software has gotten messier, notes Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. The FSF changed the definition of a free distribution, and a search for how to respond to this new definition is now well underway. Who wins and what solutions are implemented could have a major effect on the future of free and open source software. Debian has its own solution (by allowing users to choose their download), as do Ubuntu and Fedora (they include the offending firmware by default but make it possible to remove it). Meanwhile, the debate over firmware rages on. What resolves this issue?"
Learn from the OpenBSD team
Good Old Ass Kickin' Contest. -Then let Chuck Norris Decide.
John Walsh once found me while looking for some other kid. He was not amused.
Once again, the FSF takes a noble goal to a loony extreme.
If the device manufacturers had put the firmware in ROM (flash/EEPROM/whatever) attached to the peripheral rather than downloaded by the driver, does that really change anything? You haven't given the user any more or less freedom; you've just redistributed what lives where and probably increased hardware costs (and made firmware upgrades less simple). However, then those releases could support the device and be fully "free" according to this new FSF decision.
Quite frankly, I'm a pragmatist who admires all the great freedom in Linux (and that's why I choose to use it) and supports hardware manufacturers who release their specs (hence the reason I now have an ATI graphics card). That said, at the end of the day, I want a distro that makes my hardware work without a ton of fucking around because somebody philosophically disagreed with a driver. I also respect those who would rather not use such things.
Therefore, my hope is that the Ubuntu/Fedora will not change their approach. This is one of those dealbreakers on a distro for me.
Oh god, here we go again with another sequel to "Defining Free Software: The Neverending Story"...
It's just like people who argue the United States is a democracy. Then some joker has to stand up and correct them and say it's actually a federated republic. And then someone has to mention that it's a capitalistic federated republic. And then the grizzly-haired guy in back stands up and he says it can't be capitalism because we've got things like the Security and Exchange Commission, and rules and regulations, and the FCC, and the FDA, and and and -- why my god there's an awful lot of socialism here. And then someone has to point out that what we're really talking about is whether something is mostly a free market, because nothing out there is truly one thing or another-- And then the liberal arts major stands up and everybody laughs at him before he can say anything.
I'm going out for a smoke... I already know how this ends. Mr. Rogers wins (in a blood stained sweater).
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
When you let the FSF define what Freedom is, you've already lost it.
"When you see a unixer brainwashed beyond saving, kick him out of the door." - Xah Lee
I'm inclined to agree, but, apparently, there are hardware manufacturers who sue anyone who distributes their binary blobs without permission, but are quite happy to give Ubuntu and Debian and Redhat permission.. Freedom is not having to ask permission.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sometimes there are simply no good alternatives to binary blobs available. Case in point, the nvidia closed source graphics drivers. As it stands nvidia currently produce the best graphics drivers available for linux hands down. The intel open source drivers don't even come close and both open source and closed source ATI drivers are a joke.
The nvidia driver is the only linux graphics driver which supports:
a) The full opengl spec, in hardware. The intel drivers fall back to software for some opengl calls and don't support frame buffer objects at all.
b) A proper memory manager which enables, among other things, framebuffer objects and true redirected direct rendering, none of this AIGLX bullshit.
c) Any kind of opengl or compositing on multiple monitors
d) Reliable video and opengl vsync
e) Working video decode acceleration for modern high definition h264 video.
f) Proper colour/gamma adjustment for the X screen
g) Overscan adjustment for dvi to hdmi adapters
It also has by far the fastest opengl performance, is the most stable and just generally works the best out of all the linux graphics drivers. If you want decent graphics performance on linux, forget the open source drivers, go with nvidia. I'm sure anybody who has struggled getting dual monitors to work properly with any other driver will agree with me.
I know this might be a hit to my karma, but one area in which open source really isn't up to par is graphics drivers. I'd love good open source drivers for display hardware as much as anybody but for the moment nvidia's closed source drivers just wipe the floor with everything else. If you're going to complain to anybody, complain to ATI for not putting enough effort into their open source driver, although recently this has been improving with additions like DRI2 and GEM.
So before becoming evangelical and denouncing closed source modules as evil, try improving the open source modules so that they come close to the same stability and functionality.
Sam
This is how the loudness war is killing music.
For things like wireless drivers the vendors can hide behind the FCC's restrictions and not release open source firmware for their hardware. This is among the worst forms of lazy regulation as it treats all users as criminals, shifts complexity to the masses, and results in products of lesser quality.
Get rid of the bad government policies and our computers would start working better. And we'd have more freedom, both on and off the expansion bus.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
And as soon as anyone cares what the fascist software foundation says, we'll let you know. Seriously, why do those cranks get airtime? You want free? Try digging back to our time, comp.unix.sources. No religion, no restrictions, no 'freedom' with a stack of rules. We just chipped in code and sent it around to share. It's miserable how they have hijacked the word "free."
I understand the reasoning, if you wish to compete against commercially available software *cough* Microsoft *cough*. You need to provide a product that works as well as (if not better) than the competition. Should you use the proprietary software (I'm not talking about just firmware but also things like flash, etc). I just don't know. Would Ubuntu be as big as it is now if it didn't use proprietary? Would Microsoft see a loss of market share if there wasn't a (in the average user's perspective I am not talking slashdotters here) viable alternative?
I've been watching the non-free blobs issue for awhile (particularly over here at Sun, where in JDK we call them "plugs"), and it's a good discussion to have.
However, looking at the new "Free Distro Guidelines" above, I'm struck by a particular section which seems extreme:
A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so. There should be no repositories or ports for nonfree software. Programs in the system should not suggest installing nonfree plugins, documentation, and so on.
and later:
All the documentation in a free system distribution must be released under an appropriate free license. Additionally, it must take care not to recommend nonfree software. [...] What would be unacceptable is for the documentation to give people instructions for installing a nonfree program on the system, or mention conveniences they might gain by doing so.
That's just ludicrous. Frankly, it's just a (very) small step away from requiring that you don't (or can't) run any non-free app on your "free" OS. That single clause has just blown any notion of a "free" (in any sense of trying to protect the end-user's freedoms, which is the FSF's major ideological foundation) distribution. I don't know who the manic that wrote that section is, but it's going to cause immeasurable harm to the Free Software movement.
If we go by that clause, NONE of the distros are free. You'd have to cut out a huge chunk of the Ubuntu distro, remove the entire non-free Debian archive, and I'm not even sure how to get it out of Fedora.
Honestly, the addition of those clauses take it from an entirely reasonable "Please use Free Software, and this distro contains only Free Softare" to a "Free Software! Free Software! (la-la-la there-is-no-non-Free la-la-la)" freakazoidal world.
The rest of the proposal is OK, with minor quibbles, but that clause is a show-stopper. Get rid of it right away. Or lose any credibility that the FSF has.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
No doubt... Way back in the day, nvidia was the first graphic card company to support 3d for Linux. That have done a very good job supporting Linux over the years. But now that are the devil because they have secret code? I would rather have a solid card with a binary blob than a "free" card that stinks. Go ahead and piss off the users that have nvidia cards and don't want to buy another one right now. Go ahead and piss of companies that supported Linux for years. You don't need them up in your ivory tower...
Other than die-hard believers here on Slashdot, to the rest of the world, what percentage of the population cares of their software gets the Stallman stamp of approval, and what percentage just wants their software to work?
Now I understand that having OSS drivers helps the kernel devs troubleshoot those drivers, and keep them up to date with constantly changing ABIs/APIs. I prefer free software, but I won't be a zealot about it. I am quite comfortable with proprietary software if it is the best solution for my need.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Let's assume that Nvidia completely opened their driver tommorrow and broke NDAs and third-party licenses to do so.
Stallman would still complain that Firefox allows proprietary extensions.
Stallman would still complain that Google supports proprietary software too much.
Stallman would still complain that patents exist. (He may have a good point here).
Stallman would still complain that some drivers in the kernel contain proprietary firmware.
Stallman would still complain that Ubuntu doesn't use all free artwork.
Stallman would still complain that we use proprietary BIOS on our motherboard.
Stallman would still complain that companies are using GPL software to turn a profit and not enabling their customers to not pay them (ala Tivo).
Remember kiddies, true freedom is only achieved through constant vigilance and annoyance, and an ever-increasing strict list of restrictions that remove choice.
(Yes, I'm prepared to burn karma for the inevitable flame/troll mods, but search your feelings Skywalker, you know these words to be true.)
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Translation: If I don't personally need something right this minute to accomplish my short term goals, nobody needs it and anyone who wants it is crazy.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
I've always wondered why I, as a Freedom-loving-user, should prefer a device which has its non-free firmware embedded in a ROM or Flash chip rather than as a file on a CD or FTP server with my linux distribution.
Because, let's be clear: *where* the non-free firmware is being stored is usually the choice you have.
100% Free hardware would clearly be better, but there's precious little of that around...
So: why is it evil to have the firmware distributed on CD? Why should I care even one itsy-little-bit where it's stored?
and what loony extreme would that be? moral/logical consistency?
a "free distribution" by definition needs to be "free" in the FOSS sense. they're simply modifying the definition to elaborate on an issue that had been overlooked up until now.
no one is forcing you to use a free distribution. and the FSF hasn't condemned the Fedora project for taking the pragmatic approach. but it would hypocritical for them to overlook the issue of proprietary firmware blobs in their definition of free distributions after the issue has been raised by members of the community.
i'm a pragmatist too. i run Windows XP because the programs i use for work are Windows-only. but i'm not going to bitch about FSF not including my Windows XP Professional distribution in their definition of a free system just because someone "philosophically disagreed" with an OS.
TFA doesn't define what they mean by "firmware blob in the kernel"....
If they mean a piece of firmware for download to a specific hardware device, then that is rarely in the *kernel*. Usually it is held in a separate file on disk, that is downloaded to the device at boot time. If it is in a separate file, the binary firmware blob is then not a part of the kernel, so the point is moot. The little bit of loading code that opens and reads the file and blasts it to the hardware is part of the kernel - and is most likely already part of the open source code.
If they mean a part of the kernel with no open source, then it is kernel code and please stop calling it firmware.
If the complicated parts of the drivers that they don't want us to know about were in ROM instead of binary blobs, and the drivers were very simple then it would solve the problem, because anyone could write drivers for whatever OS they want. As it is, you have to be using the operating systems that Nvidea allows you to use. I prefer not to have to wait around for device manufacturers to decide we should be able to use their hardware on a specific system.
Is it any more free than having a distro that's free but not having the freedom to run it on your hardware because it's completely useless?
I understand the moral conflict, but it's not like I could buy a complete set of open hardware, and even if I could, I'd just be compromising on a different front.
I propose two new software freedoms:
-2: The Freedom to run any hardware, for any purpose
-1: The Freedom to run proprietary software, to run any hardware.
I don't understand why people don't want others have the freedom to install proprietary software on Linux system. I use both Linux and Windows. I enjoy running the latest and greatest games with the fastest video and sound cards.
I want robust support from NVIDIA and Creative. If Stallman had his way, there would be a huge disincentive to have working drivers. I require that my computer works with the hardware I bought for it.
I'm sick and tired of misguided free software enthusiasts applying free software principals to hardware. Yes, I think that as an individual tinkerer I should have the freedom to study and hack hardware that he owns, but hardware is not software. Hardware is a tangible thing. The structure of our laws protect tangible things more fiercely than ephemeral things, like software and ideas.
One of the original purpose of Free Software was to liberate hardware from the limitations of its software by protecting the freedom of the user.
However, Stallman's philosophy that "A free system distribution must not assist users in obtaining any nonfree information for practical use, or encourage them to do so" is ridiculous. Why should this be so? How does this promote freedom?
This is my computer, and it is my choice.
Stallman can't see the forest from the trees.
From http://psr.tumblr.com/post/57576525/two-new-software-freedoms
I am typing this from a Gnewsense system. I really appreciate the position Stallman holds - that the sole reason he would ever use unfree software would be to write free software to replace it. Thus, until he wrote the GNU system, he used proprietary systems and components until he could write his own free one. I am not able to go that far, but for non-work related things, I usually avoid non-free software, and even at work, I am working with Red Hat and other free software a lot of the time.
I guess I wasn't following things closely as one thing I was surprised at when I started using Debian (and later Ubuntu) was that there was no free Java out there. Gcj/gij and Kaffe are out there, but neither is at a level that can run most modern Java programs. Sun said in 2006 they were releasing Java as GPLv2, but that is still going on as far as I know. No full-featured Java means problems for packages I use like Eclipse or Vuze or Freenet.
Video players also have a lot of problems. Mplayer and Debian had a long history (of no Mplayer), but over the past two years it has been brought into Debian (but not Gnewsense). Flash videos from places like Youtube is a problem as well, I use Gnash, which can see some videos on Youtube and can't with others. It's also a whole rigmarole for me to watch Youtube videos on Gnewsense, I actually paste URLs into a shell script instead of watching them through my browser.
I figure if I'm going to put binary blobs, Java, and so forth on, I might as well being using Microsoft Vista. I agree with Stallman that a system is not 100% free if it allows an automatic method of installing non-free things. I personally think Debian, while not 100% free, is still close enough to suit myself in terms of allowing the option of installing non-free stuff. I don't use Debian any more but I can appreciate their position. With regards to Fedora and Ubuntu, I do not think the "you can remove non-free stuff if you want" argument holds water. That is a slippery slope as far as I'm concerned.
I appreciate Stallman's position very much. The problem with technical people is they tend to think very logically and practically and technically and don't really appreciate what Stallman's stance does. For every Stallman out there, there are thousands of guys in suits out there who want to see Vista, or at the very least some Suse hybrid on everyone's desk. I think we are very lucky to have Stallman around. I have to admit he has been helped by the Linus's and Debian's out there which are a little more practical, and a little less ideological (although to the average suit, they seem as ideological as Stallman). But stepping too far away to me is on a slippery slope to Vista land. It's an old story - if you can't beat it, then sue it for patent crap, start making Suse Linux/Microsoft hybrids and all of that.
until you have the code for every PGA, the microcode for every processor, the schematics of every logic element. These all embody code of some sort. Where do you draw the line?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
I agree w/ parent.
For me the issue is not, do I get the source code or not? Binary blobs are fine. If someone does not want to give the source that is OK w/ me.
But, if I do not have the right to hack it (whatever form it is) or do not have the right to redistribute my hack, then then it is not free and should not be included in a "free" distribution.
There is no such thing as all encompassing freedom. We procure certain hardware and some of it may even be off the shelf. I deal with the tools given to me to perform the job. I certainly aim to procure hardware which is more open, but certain attitudes will kill the open source movement. I recently tried to install Fedora 10, and the graphics are completely broken with the nv driver. I was able to complete the installation by guessing at the number of tabs that I had to press in order to complete the installation. It was better than dealing with an entity that complied with misleading the users about capabilities such as Intel. Buying off the shelf hardware shouldn't disqualify me from using the operating system of my choice. Microsoft does very little well, but Linux outright hates the user. I hate to say it, but Linux is rapidly becoming a niche os because of attitude. I tried to get my employer to use Linux for test equipment because we need kismet, and too few people are willing to deal with the pain of learning a new OS and dealing with the attitudes of developers. For GNU/Linux to succeed, egos have to start being checked at the door. There is a way to profit from open source hardware, but freedom should be ensured during the design phase and not after the product is already commercialized. If you come up with a plan that will cut costs and increase margins, most companies will accept and embrace it. The cries of freedom cause nothing but alienation. Start putting forward designs that are free or quit complaining. I can't tell you how many "free" developers have told me RTFM, only to find bugs in their code.
> I would rather have a solid card with a binary blob than a "free" card that stinks.
I'd personally choose that too, but in my experience the nvidia binary driver is everything but solid. On my two Linux systems with nvidia video cards, the nvidia driver is the number one thing that causes me trouble. Sure it works ok with typical "default" settings, but throw in a xinerama setup + S3 suspend support and you'll be faced with undocumented limitations, poor performance and wake up problems cause by the driver module. I have sent bug reports to nvidia about the issues I have had and never heard anything back.
I've never had problems with Xinerama and nVidia but yeah I suppose S3 could be problematic.
Personally I think I'll stick to Intel for the moment.
I'm not a gamer and as long as it handles KDE 4's compositing, then I'm happy.
Their drivers are stunning and they are completely open.
2.6.28 and 2.6.29 have some really neat stuff for Intel cards.
The answer is simple. The way to address the problem is to do to proprietary hardware what free software did to proprietary software. Design non-proprietary hardware and make it accessible to the masses.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Is it any more free than having a distro that's free but not having the freedom to run it on your hardware because it's completely useless?
Having a distro like that serves at least one practical purpose: I can use it to evaluate a given set of hardware for compatibility. That can inform future purchasing decisions.
For instance, having used Linux, I now know that I will never knowingly buy a Broadcom wireless card -- or, very likely, anything from Broadcom -- even for devices I don't plan to run Linux on.
This is just taking that one step further.
it's not like I could buy a complete set of open hardware
Actually, under certain, limited circumstances, you can. I believe the OpenMoko Freerunner was such a device.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"So you gave Redhat permission to distribute this data?" "Yes." "And were you aware it was being distributed under the GPL?" "Uhh..." "And that the GPL allows further modification and redistribution so long as it remains under that license?" "..." "Case dismissed!"
If granting distribution rights to someone also meant giving them the right to relicense what they were distributing, the GPL would be defunct.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
'What resolves this issue?"
OpenBSD, of course.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I'm a little lost since I'm not sure how you mean this quote. Exactly who said that quote and where? I didn't find that quote in the grandparent post to which you followed up nor do I recall the FSF ever arguing this. To the contrary, they talk about proprietary software all the time: the problems it poses for society, the conflict between what schools ought to be doing and the message proprietary software sends instead, how to go about working for practical replacements to proprietary software so it isn't a problem (as they've done so many times by encouraging free software replacements or developing and distributing free software replacements directly).
If you're trying to get at some absolutist argument about freedom (so the quote isn't to be taken as someone's direct words but instead a concept) it won't work because some freedoms conflict and you need restrictions on some freedoms to preserve other more important freedoms. Again, I don't recall anyone ever advocating that one can't talk about software freedom outside of very restrictive circumstances (the FSF generally doesn't do this in its works so as to avoid lending legitimacy to proprietary software, but this is highly dependent on context). Restricting some freedoms to preserve other freedoms is an argument FSF speakers have made in talks which I'll try to summarize: we value pedestrians more highly than vehicle drivers so we restrict drivers from driving anywhere they want at any speed. We make them use streets, obey speed limits, and stop at intersections so pedestrians can cross. In the free software community the FSF wrote the GPL to restrict licensing of derivatives in order to preserve the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify for all computer users.
Tivoization is a real and present threat to software freedom. So the FSF improved the GPL and included language which nullifies that threat. The same for the threat posed by the Microsoft-Novell patent deal. Even the way in which Bittorrent distributes software was not well-addressed in GPLv2 so it was better handled in GPLv3. It's right and proper that when you're working to preserve software freedom you react to problems large and small as they arise. I'm guessing GPLv4 will be more of the same: reacting to dangers to software freedom, improving language to allow what may be confused for unintentional copyright infringement (ala Bittorrent where it's possible to inadvertantly distribute binaries without complete corresponding source code or a written promise for said source code), and generally making it easier to correct mistakes and get on with sharing and improving.
Digital Citizen
There is a huge difference between cards with proprietary drivers, and cards with proprietary firmware. Drivers run in your OS, are OS dependent, and have significant security risk. Binary drivers are evil (like from Nvidia).
Proprietary firmware, on the other hand, does *not* run in the OS - it runs on the card. The binary firmware blob is OS independent - works for Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, BeOS, whatever. It is CPU independent - the card generally doesn't care whether the host system is PowerPC, Intel, or ARM. While there is a small chance that firmware can be a security risk (since it gets DMA access to memory), it is far more remote than binary drivers.
There is no reason to object to a binary firmware blob - unless there is some stupid restriction on redistributing it (Hi, Broadcom). All it does is save money by replacing a ROM (RAM is cheaper than ROM) - and makes firmware upgrades trivial.
I can't believe FSF is objecting to this. Someone should do a parody of their new guidelines - with instructions on how to remove all PROMs from the motherboard, I/O cards, disk drives, etc. All those PROMs contain secret proprietary firmware. We can't be buying hardware with proprietary secrets now, can we?
Seriously, they should simply require binary firmware to be freely redistributable - giving you the same same freedom as if it was in ROM.
The free software community needs someone like Stallman. I mean seeing from all the comments on Slashdot it seems very few people actually care about open source and free software. It's sad, because they like open source/free software for it's features but they don't understand the ideology which enabled this software to exist in the first place.
System must actively prevent you from installing non-free software to be considered free?
It's not DRM, it's FRM (free-rights management)!
There actually are a number of open source hardware projects around. Modern "FPGA" (field programmable gate array) devices are getting incredibly cheap, and can be used to design your own CPU.
(opencores.org is one such site)
It won't touch the latest state of the art, but hey..
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
I just don't see the difference between having to use certain software because of the demands of the hardware (Broadcom, most videocards) and having to use certain hardware because of the demands of the software (whatever can be supported using only completely open drivers). Either way you're sacrificing a degree of freedom in your choices, it's silly to think that one is somehow morally superior or more relevant.
Very limited circumstances, but to continue with the rest of my sentence: How is being forced to use the OpenMoko Freerunner, a phone which I had no interest in using superior than using whatever phone I want, but having to deal with software I may not agree with morally? Until all platforms are 100% open and firmware support is universal you'll always be cutting corner at one end or the other. I guess they are the FSF not the Freedom Foundation though, so I guess I've answered my own question about their stance.
It's miserable how they have hijacked the word "free."
Back then, the "free" was implied. We called it software and that you could use it as you would was assumed. It's only a generation of lawsuits that have pulled us back from the brink of progress.
Get off my lawn kid.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
These limits to your choices are not a sacrifice for your freedom. As freedom in your example means to be able to make your choices according to your requirements, not the availability of the choices that will fulfil all your requirements.
Here we are talking about freedom on another level, and it is how unrestrained you are in your work with the computer system, and the aim is to create a system in which you don't get any forced restrictions, which can be abused. Being disallowed or prevented to do these things with software is an example of a real freedom restriction.
The hardware is removing part of your freedom. At that moment you aren't affected much by this, as neither this is abused, nor it is limiting anything important that you could do. Still, in the long term, if the issue is overlooked, it might lead to many trouble. And it is already creating issues with creating free systems. So doing something about the issue is good in the end.
It doesn't mean restricting you from using the said hardware, just putting this hardware at a little disadvantage, which will draw the line on what is acceptable, and will push the things in the direction that you get more freedom with the hardware in the future.
The aim to create a free phone is also a step in the right direction. While not really that usable, and therefore not helping anyone, it is taking us in the right direction.
To quote Wikipedia: [Citation needed]
What you're saying would go directly against Debian's free software guidelines.
The UltraSPARC T2 is open source. You can download the Verilog for it, and with a big enough FPGA you can run it. Or you can run it in a simulator, or send it off and get it fab'd. You can take the core and incorporate it into a larger design with some custom accelerators (it has a very clean coprocessor interface for doing this) and get that fab'd. It has good performance and good performance per Watt for a lot of workloads.
Open source does not been designed by hobbyists and does not mean without commercial backing. If you make improvements to the T2 design and release your changes, then Sun may well incorporate them in the T3, or if they don't, you can get someone else to manufacture the chips for you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
RedHat Enterprise Linux is not under the GPL. Fedora is not under the GPL. Ubuntu is not under the GPL. Certain parts of all of these are under the GPL, however they are distributed with some GPL-incompatible components (e.g. Apache). The 'mere aggregation' clause of the GPL means that the GPL does not apply to any of these.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Way back in the day, nvidia was the first graphic card company to support 3d for Linux
Really? Because I remember running GLQuake with my VooDoo 2 under Linux before nVidia existed.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"I want a distro that makes my hardware work without a ton of fucking around because somebody philosophically disagreed with a driver. I also respect those who would rather not use such things."
You want freedom, but only if you dont have to defend it yourself.
The point is that the author of the article is Bruce Byfield and he is known as a news troll. There is nothing wrong in projects which try to extend the realm of free software by going into free hardware.
As of the philosophical concerns we know that proprietary drivers for Linux often lack quality (Linux is not an important platform for hardware manufacturers) and we can't fix them.
The Debian Free Software Guidelines (paragraph 8) clearly says that "License Must Not Be Specific to Debian".
http://www.debian.org/social_contract
Like the article tells, Debian developers are currently negotiating if the firmware blobs should be removed before or after the Lenny release. In any case, Debian developers are removing all the kernel binary blobs from their main repository and they won't distribute any software where the distribution license is not the same for everyone.
AFAIK, the Debian installer for Lenny already checks your hardware and it prompts for additional non-free packages of drivers or firmware (which the user needs to download separately from the installer) if your hardware needs them to work properly. Then it's up to the user to decide if non-free drivers or firmware will be installed.
I agree that the BIOS must be free. It runs on the host CPU, and malware/spyware in the BIOS can do just about anything - especially with virtual machine technology. I am glad that FSF is insisting on open BIOS.
However, we are talking about *device* firmware here. You know, like inside your disk drive or USB wireless stick. Are they going to insist that their mice and keyboards have open firmware? Yes, open/free hardware is a worthy project, but it really should not try to piggy back on free *software*.
What's worst is that legally in order to maintain copyrights you need to make reasonable efforts at protecting those rights.
That is a feature of trademark law, not copyright law. Look it up
Every time a Slashdot user mentions diligence in defending your copyright or patent, someone who has never heard of estoppel by laches claims that only trademarks need diligence. Laches: look it up. And while you're at it, look up other estoppel defenses.
I understand the moral conflict, but it's not like I could buy a complete set of open hardware, and even if I could, I'd just be compromising on a different front.
Visiting here would be a good start:
http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards