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).
This is not the point I was arguing. I'm not arguing for "politics in the BBC", I'm arguing for a means tested TV licence.
I agree with the point that the BBC should not have political influences, and you're taking that as read that I think that the TV Licence should, become a tax, or the BBC should be a division of government, or any other imagined situations you care to create.
Means testing would make the system fairer, and would not magically turn the BBC into a mouth piece for the government.
no taxation without representation
It's pretty much a tax right now, and I get no explict representation. Saying that if we made it means-tested, we'd need to have proportional representation doesn't follow.
Richer people get extra votes
While this does tend to occur in Republics, it's not like someone gets extra votes for every £10k extra they earn. Bribery is reserved to the extremely rich, and it most likely goes on right now, even with the BBC. Bias is something that is very easy to create.
The British public does not want...
People often use this as an debating tactic, and most often, it's an underhanded technique to say "I know more about the public than you - you're out of touch!. It's a tactic particularly common in high end politics (if you've ever watched parlimentary debates involving the (shadow/)cabinet, you'll see it with great frequency), and it's fairly unimpressive.
If they scaled the fee according to an individual's means, then their bias would slant toward serving the interests of the wealthy (which is what many anti-licensing activists very badly want).
How so? People who pay more taxes don't get extra votes. Richer people do benefit from the current politicial system, but only because peerages are proportional to donations.
You could say the same about road tax. Much like road tax, it is only paid by people who own and use cars on the public roads. However, most of us realise that the roads are a sufficiently useful public service that this is necessary. Many of us also realise that the same applies both to the TV and the radio.
Yes, under the current system, most people want to help fund the BBC. However, tv licences are a very bad way of doing it.
If taxes are indeed essential, is there any reason not to use means testing on them?
When you're on minimum wage (£5.35 when over 22), the licence fee (£131.50) is nearly 25 hours work, which is nearly 3 days work. If you're retired, but under 75, you still have to pay in full, and on a fixed income, again, it's very expensive.
Even if you think the BBC is a good thing to fund publicly, it's important to note that the licence is very very badly worked. It badly needs to scale with income, so the lower-paid are more able to afford it.
And you know what? The few relatively dangerous places around the place -- not that Cambridge is a particularly dangerous city to live in -- are still dangerous.
Thank god someone else realised this. Video camera are not a deterrent! They're only useful for solving crimes - they're totally useless at preventing them.
Thanks for the warning, but some of us are smart enough to back up our data files.
Yeah, if only DRM didn't retrict the use of backed up files. It's not just loss of files that is a risk - it's the ability to play them in 20 years time. Will iTunes still be the market leader? Will iTunes even exist?
It doesn't matter all that much if you back them up, because it still looks like you're set to lose in the long run.
Oh how I wish people would call it Unix. It's a better way to be inclusive of GNU, the Linux Kernel, BSD, Xorg and every other group without having to specifically name each one.
Let's be honest, they're all big contributing factors, so why not imply them all?
whats your problem exactly? im not throwing around Communist as an insult, but you probably assume that, if your an american. This kind of desire for everything people make to be free IS Communism. try reading up on it before you wade in.
You see, this is exactly the issue I'm talking about. Total, and utter bullshit assumptions. I'm not an American, for one (not that it should make any ideological difference to those to whom political arguments stand on their merits rather than on foolish labels). The assumption I don't know what I'm talking about is another big assumption - seeing as, until this post, I hadn't actually detailed what my opinion was - I'd only pointed out that calling people Communists was wrong in this case.
I realise you're not insulting people as "Communists", but what bugs me is that you obviously have no idea what political ideologies you're dealing with and your insistance on calling them Communist is extremely mistaken.
Pirates aren't Communist. You're severely mistaken there. While "common ownership" is a feature of Communism, IP-related piracy and Communism are normally unrelated. Common ownership under Marxist and Communist ideologies does not relate solely to IP - if these pirates where actually Communist as you say, why aren't they sharing physical property, such as computers or food?
(Ideologically justified) Piracy is much, much, more closely related to branches of Libertarianism. Pirates are not advocates of shared physical property, as Communists are, but rather are advocates of high levels of freedom and ownership in personal property. They generally believe they have a moral right to copy the data off the media they own, if they wish, and share that with others, if they wish.
Piracy is based on a strong belief of personal ownership of property, not of a strong belief of public ownership of property.
Unless you hadn't noticed, Libertarianism and Communism are at opposite ends of the fucking political spectrum.
Also, if you respond to this post, please make an effort to use correct spelling, grammar and capitalisation.
It is most certainly not a bad idea to get people to install firefox.
If you have trouble running it on your computer, install a post-1998 operating system. Upgrade to a 486. splurge for that extra 256MB of RAM. Get your cat out of the computer tower. Do whatever it takes, but get with the program.
That's exactly what we need. A website requiring 256mb of RAM.
If Slashdot Poster susano_otter says Linux isn't desktop ready, then desktop ready it mustn't be!
After all, the Slashdot Poster susano_otter is well known for its expertise in IT and its reliability as a source of proven facts and sober analysis!
Hrm.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do believe this is proof positive that people are more willing to listen to large national newspapers rather than slashdotters with cliche witisisms!
A reply you made to a story about light bulbs, where you pretend you've been called a communist, and take offence:
Do you have any idea how paranoid this sounds to someone not from the USA? Jesus christ, you cant suggest the government legislates on energy efficiency without being labelled a communist.
Well, it seems like you've returned the favour. Except this time, you decided to bring out the "communist" cat-calls over a story dealing with embroidery.
Looking down what I'm able to view of your posting history, I'm again able to see lots of other posts dealing with calling each other communists/fascists. Including one were you spelt both "communist" and "fascist" wrong.
I don't "frown upon" it. People have every right to let their bodies for sex in the same way they are able to let their bodies from labour.
The two issues with prostitution are that "it's immoral!" and that women get abused. In many ways, the latter of those is highly accentuated by the former: when prostitution isn't illegal, it becomes relatively above board (see the Netherlands for a good example of this). Banning prostitution is much like prohibition: it got banned because a certain group thought it was morally wrong, and criminality of something tends to draw criminals towards it.
Pirate Bay aren't selling pirated software. In fact, they're not selling anything. They're (essentially) offering a platform for people who have data (be it pirated software or pictures of your mum) to tell others about it and subsequently download it - a *very* different thing by every measure - legal, moral, ethical or otherwise.
I never said they were selling anything (they actually are selling merch, but that's beside the point): it doesn't really matter. The actions they make are illegal in some countries, and I don't think they should be.
The selling point isn't really important; it's the right that people should be able to do anything they want with their property.
But, here is my question for you: would you, given the chance, create a legal system in the USA where the Free Software model was the only one allowed? In other words, directly charging for software distribution and licensing that does not allow copying would be illegal.
No, I wouldn't. While I don't agree with the closed-source method, and think it's an immoral action, I wouldn't stop companies from making software and attempting to charge money in return for it. Free Software must compete with this kind of software development; outlawing it in the way they have tried to outlaw us with patents and the like would be an abuse of power.
However: I would not enshine intellectual property in law; if companies wish to restrict distribution of their software, they should do it from within their own powers.
I would most certainly allow DRM, for example. While I think it's a terrible thing, and I'll always work to destroy it, I don't think that the law is a tool to remove those I disagree with - I just think it shouldn't give unnatural advantages to the closed-software sector (via DMCA, Copyright Law etc) as it currently does.
Well, according to the law in most western countries you're correct. But the law isn't any kind of moral guideline (one only needs to look as far as the legal profession to discover this).
I (somewhat obviously) don't agree with the current position of the law, and think it should be different.
When I was talking about being able to share/sell binary in my previous post, I wasn't making legal speculation (I'm aware of what the law is on this subject, in the UK). I'm debating it; it's moral speculation.
I don't agree that music on cd should be property of the artist: I personally think it should be property of the owner of the cd. I'm aware that, by law, it is most likely copyrighted to someone.
Honestly, I think the law is currently flat out wrong in all areas of "Intellectual Property".
Thank goodness we'll never have such a system. Why would I ever become a software developer if there was no money in it?
Software can still be profitable even when it is not directly sold for a profit. In fact, it's probably just as profitable.
We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell. Except our software is Free, for anyone to use. IBM conduct business in the Free/Open Software areas which measures investments and profits in the billion-dollar range. To pretend that it is not profitable is entirely moronic.
Your way would hold technological development back, possibly halt it.
Jesus, that's weird. It doesn't correlate with real life at all. The Free Software community has been writing software for around 20 years, doing exactly this, and we currently have a complete operating system, which in the vast majority of cases compares extremely favourably to the software-as-a-product sector. We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell. Except our software is Free, for anyone to use. IBM conduct business in the Free/Open Software areas which measures investments and profits in the billion-dollar range. To pretend that it is not extremely profitable is entirely moronic.
Software piracy is not merely "cheating", it's "stealing". Think of the software developers who are victims of piracy. The money they deserve is stolen by those who sell pirate software. Don't you think the crime deserves harsh punishment?
It's not a moral wrong, authoritarians call it "copyright infringment" and I personally think it deserves encouragement.
Software developers don't deserve money just because someone passes binary to another person. The binary is the property of the person who owns the media it is on. If I were to invent a new word, would I be able to charge money for it every time someone used it?
Richard Stallman often encourages the sale of Free Software (a position which many people unfamiliar with his ideology find confusing).
Why shouldn't third parties be able to sell the things they own for profit? Or are we bound to this idea that "For Free is good, but for profit is bad". Businesses are not, by their nature, bad. Much like a loony tunes television episode I recall watching as a child "It's not the automobile that's evil; it's the driver".
There are many piracy groups which are often seen as charities which almost aren't; pirate bay for example are most certainly profitable. Whether they are a business by the letter of the law I'm not entirely sure.
Other "piracy groups" are very obviously web startups. Isohunt, for example, provide a very useful service, and, I expect profit from it.
If something is bad to do for profit, it is normally bad to do it for free also. I think that piracy is neither. Binary is the property of whose media it is on, and to hell with anyone who wants to say otherwise.
What widget set is that? It strongly reminds me of another operating system. Creating a graphical installer is one thing, but there's no need to ape the competition that much.;)
Slashdot Mirror
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).
This is not the point I was arguing. I'm not arguing for "politics in the BBC", I'm arguing for a means tested TV licence.
I agree with the point that the BBC should not have political influences, and you're taking that as read that I think that the TV Licence should, become a tax, or the BBC should be a division of government, or any other imagined situations you care to create.
Means testing would make the system fairer, and would not magically turn the BBC into a mouth piece for the government.
no taxation without representation
It's pretty much a tax right now, and I get no explict representation. Saying that if we made it means-tested, we'd need to have proportional representation doesn't follow.
Richer people get extra votes
While this does tend to occur in Republics, it's not like someone gets extra votes for every £10k extra they earn. Bribery is reserved to the extremely rich, and it most likely goes on right now, even with the BBC. Bias is something that is very easy to create.
The British public does not want...
People often use this as an debating tactic, and most often, it's an underhanded technique to say "I know more about the public than you - you're out of touch!. It's a tactic particularly common in high end politics (if you've ever watched parlimentary debates involving the (shadow/)cabinet, you'll see it with great frequency), and it's fairly unimpressive.
If they scaled the fee according to an individual's means, then their bias would slant toward serving the interests of the wealthy (which is what many anti-licensing activists very badly want).
How so? People who pay more taxes don't get extra votes. Richer people do benefit from the current politicial system, but only because peerages are proportional to donations.
You could say the same about road tax. Much like road tax, it is only paid by people who own and use cars on the public roads. However, most of us realise that the roads are a sufficiently useful public service that this is necessary. Many of us also realise that the same applies both to the TV and the radio.
Yes, under the current system, most people want to help fund the BBC. However, tv licences are a very bad way of doing it.
If taxes are indeed essential, is there any reason not to use means testing on them?
When you're on minimum wage (£5.35 when over 22), the licence fee (£131.50) is nearly 25 hours work, which is nearly 3 days work. If you're retired, but under 75, you still have to pay in full, and on a fixed income, again, it's very expensive.
Even if you think the BBC is a good thing to fund publicly, it's important to note that the licence is very very badly worked. It badly needs to scale with income, so the lower-paid are more able to afford it.
He didn't say DRM. The BBC would have no interest in DRM anyway.
We're closer to having FOSS wmv3 support than we are RM support. Either way, it doesn't matter, RM sucks.
But then you'll be unable to play online.
Were you dropped on your head as a child, or do you just ignore certain details about "locked in" platforms?
And you know what? The few relatively dangerous places around the place -- not that Cambridge is a particularly dangerous city to live in -- are still dangerous.
Thank god someone else realised this. Video camera are not a deterrent! They're only useful for solving crimes - they're totally useless at preventing them.
Cameras aren't cops.
Thanks for the warning, but some of us are smart enough to back up our data files.
Yeah, if only DRM didn't retrict the use of backed up files. It's not just loss of files that is a risk - it's the ability to play them in 20 years time. Will iTunes still be the market leader? Will iTunes even exist?
It doesn't matter all that much if you back them up, because it still looks like you're set to lose in the long run.
Oh how I wish people would call it Unix. It's a better way to be inclusive of GNU, the Linux Kernel, BSD, Xorg and every other group without having to specifically name each one.
Let's be honest, they're all big contributing factors, so why not imply them all?
whats your problem exactly? im not throwing around Communist as an insult, but you probably assume that, if your an american. This kind of desire for everything people make to be free IS Communism. try reading up on it before you wade in.
You see, this is exactly the issue I'm talking about. Total, and utter bullshit assumptions. I'm not an American, for one (not that it should make any ideological difference to those to whom political arguments stand on their merits rather than on foolish labels). The assumption I don't know what I'm talking about is another big assumption - seeing as, until this post, I hadn't actually detailed what my opinion was - I'd only pointed out that calling people Communists was wrong in this case.
I realise you're not insulting people as "Communists", but what bugs me is that you obviously have no idea what political ideologies you're dealing with and your insistance on calling them Communist is extremely mistaken.
Pirates aren't Communist. You're severely mistaken there. While "common ownership" is a feature of Communism, IP-related piracy and Communism are normally unrelated. Common ownership under Marxist and Communist ideologies does not relate solely to IP - if these pirates where actually Communist as you say, why aren't they sharing physical property, such as computers or food?
(Ideologically justified) Piracy is much, much, more closely related to branches of Libertarianism. Pirates are not advocates of shared physical property, as Communists are, but rather are advocates of high levels of freedom and ownership in personal property. They generally believe they have a moral right to copy the data off the media they own, if they wish, and share that with others, if they wish.
Piracy is based on a strong belief of personal ownership of property, not of a strong belief of public ownership of property.
Unless you hadn't noticed, Libertarianism and Communism are at opposite ends of the fucking political spectrum.
Also, if you respond to this post, please make an effort to use correct spelling, grammar and capitalisation.
It is most certainly not a bad idea to get people to install firefox. If you have trouble running it on your computer, install a post-1998 operating system. Upgrade to a 486. splurge for that extra 256MB of RAM. Get your cat out of the computer tower. Do whatever it takes, but get with the program.
That's exactly what we need. A website requiring 256mb of RAM.
That kind of mentality lead to Java.
If Slashdot Poster susano_otter says Linux isn't desktop ready, then desktop ready it mustn't be!
After all, the Slashdot Poster susano_otter is well known for its expertise in IT and its reliability as a source of proven facts and sober analysis!
Hrm.
Actually, now that I think about it, I do believe this is proof positive that people are more willing to listen to large national newspapers rather than slashdotters with cliche witisisms!
It was changed to "Linux for Australians".
Didn't you get the memo?
A reply you made to a story about light bulbs, where you pretend you've been called a communist, and take offence:
Do you have any idea how paranoid this sounds to someone not from the USA? Jesus christ, you cant suggest the government legislates on energy efficiency without being labelled a communist.
Well, it seems like you've returned the favour. Except this time, you decided to bring out the "communist" cat-calls over a story dealing with embroidery.
Looking down what I'm able to view of your posting history, I'm again able to see lots of other posts dealing with calling each other communists/fascists. Including one were you spelt both "communist" and "fascist" wrong.
Keep up the good work.
If only they provided Free and Open Source drivers for their wireless cards. Unfortunately, OpenBSD had to do that work.
In most places sex for profit is frowned upon.
I don't "frown upon" it. People have every right to let their bodies for sex in the same way they are able to let their bodies from labour.
The two issues with prostitution are that "it's immoral!" and that women get abused. In many ways, the latter of those is highly accentuated by the former: when prostitution isn't illegal, it becomes relatively above board (see the Netherlands for a good example of this). Banning prostitution is much like prohibition: it got banned because a certain group thought it was morally wrong, and criminality of something tends to draw criminals towards it.
Excuse the bold, i missed a "close bold" tag.
Pirate Bay aren't selling pirated software. In fact, they're not selling anything. They're (essentially) offering a platform for people who have data (be it pirated software or pictures of your mum) to tell others about it and subsequently download it - a *very* different thing by every measure - legal, moral, ethical or otherwise.
I never said they were selling anything (they actually are selling merch, but that's beside the point): it doesn't really matter. The actions they make are illegal in some countries, and I don't think they should be.
The selling point isn't really important; it's the right that people should be able to do anything they want with their property.
But, here is my question for you: would you, given the chance, create a legal system in the USA where the Free Software model was the only one allowed? In other words, directly charging for software distribution and licensing that does not allow copying would be illegal.
No, I wouldn't. While I don't agree with the closed-source method, and think it's an immoral action, I wouldn't stop companies from making software and attempting to charge money in return for it. Free Software must compete with this kind of software development; outlawing it in the way they have tried to outlaw us with patents and the like would be an abuse of power.
However: I would not enshine intellectual property in law; if companies wish to restrict distribution of their software, they should do it from within their own powers.
I would most certainly allow DRM, for example. While I think it's a terrible thing, and I'll always work to destroy it, I don't think that the law is a tool to remove those I disagree with - I just think it shouldn't give unnatural advantages to the closed-software sector (via DMCA, Copyright Law etc) as it currently does.
Well, according to the law in most western countries you're correct. But the law isn't any kind of moral guideline (one only needs to look as far as the legal profession to discover this).
I (somewhat obviously) don't agree with the current position of the law, and think it should be different.
When I was talking about being able to share/sell binary in my previous post, I wasn't making legal speculation (I'm aware of what the law is on this subject, in the UK). I'm debating it; it's moral speculation.
I don't agree that music on cd should be property of the artist: I personally think it should be property of the owner of the cd. I'm aware that, by law, it is most likely copyrighted to someone.
Honestly, I think the law is currently flat out wrong in all areas of "Intellectual Property".
Thank goodness we'll never have such a system. Why would I ever become a software developer if there was no money in it?
Software can still be profitable even when it is not directly sold for a profit. In fact, it's probably just as profitable.
We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell. Except our software is Free, for anyone to use. IBM conduct business in the Free/Open Software areas which measures investments and profits in the billion-dollar range. To pretend that it is not profitable is entirely moronic.
Your way would hold technological development back, possibly halt it.
Jesus, that's weird. It doesn't correlate with real life at all. The Free Software community has been writing software for around 20 years, doing exactly this, and we currently have a complete operating system, which in the vast majority of cases compares extremely favourably to the software-as-a-product sector. We have big companies just like they do: Red Hat, IBM and large parts of Novell. Except our software is Free, for anyone to use. IBM conduct business in the Free/Open Software areas which measures investments and profits in the billion-dollar range. To pretend that it is not extremely profitable is entirely moronic.
Software piracy is not merely "cheating", it's "stealing". Think of the software developers who are victims of piracy. The money they deserve is stolen by those who sell pirate software. Don't you think the crime deserves harsh punishment?
It's not a moral wrong, authoritarians call it "copyright infringment" and I personally think it deserves encouragement.
Software developers don't deserve money just because someone passes binary to another person. The binary is the property of the person who owns the media it is on. If I were to invent a new word, would I be able to charge money for it every time someone used it?
Is it?
Richard Stallman often encourages the sale of Free Software (a position which many people unfamiliar with his ideology find confusing).
Why shouldn't third parties be able to sell the things they own for profit? Or are we bound to this idea that "For Free is good, but for profit is bad". Businesses are not, by their nature, bad. Much like a loony tunes television episode I recall watching as a child "It's not the automobile that's evil; it's the driver".
There are many piracy groups which are often seen as charities which almost aren't; pirate bay for example are most certainly profitable. Whether they are a business by the letter of the law I'm not entirely sure.
Other "piracy groups" are very obviously web startups. Isohunt, for example, provide a very useful service, and, I expect profit from it.
If something is bad to do for profit, it is normally bad to do it for free also. I think that piracy is neither. Binary is the property of whose media it is on, and to hell with anyone who wants to say otherwise.
What widget set is that? It strongly reminds me of another operating system. Creating a graphical installer is one thing, but there's no need to ape the competition that much. ;)