OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt announced that Intel has refused his request to permit that the firmware for their wireless chipsets be made freely distributable. He explains, “I had asked for free terms under which we (and Linux, anyone) can redistribute the firmwares for their wireless chipsets. Without these firmware files included in OpenBSD, users must go do some click-through license at some web site to get at the files. Without those files, these devices are just bits of metal, plastic, and sand.“
OpenBSD: Intel Refuses To Open Wireless Chipsets
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Well – as Theo said – boycott Intel products. It’s the only way these big bastard mega corporations listen. Slowly, as open source users grow it’ll hurt Intel more and more.
I can’t say I like Intel much anyways, their CPUs have been vastly overpriced for a long time, no better performing than their major competitor, and they’ve had locked abilities in their CPUs for a long time now, that customers are paying for, but Intel has chosen not to unlock. Can’t say I appreciate their attitude.
If you purchase a CPU from another vendor, do the right thing and send a nice letter (not email) to Intel to let them know *why* you did so. After they get 10,000 such letters or so they *might* just wake up. Might.
Dave W Pastern
For any purchases, I check for Linux/OS support of the hardware to buy. Vendors don’t have to provide Linux or BSD drivers if they think it’s too much work, but they DO have to provide specs on how to program their hardware, so that such drivers can be written if needed. If vendors refuse to provide even programming specs, then I won’t buy their stuff.
Firmware is not quite the same, but it says something about how opensource-friendly a vendor is. So news like this just removes the product from my shopping list for a while. Too bad for Intel, but then, ignoring wishes of your customers is always bad for business.
Probaby the best way is to boycott Centrino stuff. Pentium M has not been developed by Intel anyway. That is the excuse for this good product
Another is to make youreslf heard. “I would have bought but the firmware is hidden deep within your websites.”
If Intel is making it difficult to to obtain a binary for the chipset; just like Sun for their JRE / JDK. Would they like to guess what happens? I will not use them. No muss, no fuss and no chipsets, no processors, no NIC’s, nothing period. I will not support Intel. There are enough 3rd party chipsets with the performance as good as or better than what Intel has on the table. As for processors, can you say AMD?
Good luck intel, your going to need it.
I agree with Theo, if they ignore OSS then…
Intel was some time ago a good performance respected company, like Cisco etc.
i bought a intel D845PEBT2 from a local store and a CeleronD 330. it didnt worked , after emailing intel they said that it was incopatible, i mailad the link to the CeleronD site that my motherboard(chipset) was compatible with their new CPU.
now im sitting with a unused mb & cpu to upgrade
Has it ever occurred to anyone that Intel may not be legally able to do what Theo wants? Probably not…
I’ve been boycotting Intel for years. What took you guys so long?
Let’s see, their DRM initiatives pissed me off. Their processors sucked for price/performance for the longest time. They did contribute to open source, but that was more of an accident than a policy, from what I’ve seen. And they pissed on AMD when they stole their AMD64 tech to improve the Pentium. The list goes on…
What does it take to open your eyes to bad business practices? Do they have to become a monopoly and kill all their competition first? Or lay off tens of thousands of employees in a day? Or embed a full DRM solution in your PC?
What does it take?
For a company that wants to try to “appear” to be customer and developer friendly, and Intel has tried to play that game, they should have thought about that BEFORE getting into any legal entanglements over firmware. Instead Intel keeps putting out hardware that they will not release specs on nor allow for more friendly licensing of binary firmwares. It hurts NO ONE to allow people to package the drivers needed for hardware in binary from in a redistributable form as part of an OS. In fact, it helps all concerned.
I’m not advocating opening the source code for the hardware drivers concerned, that may indeed be legally problematic. But not being able to simply package the binary in a useable form in an alternative OS? That’s not exactly brilliant customer relations.
“Has it ever occurred to anyone that Intel may not be legally able to do what Theo wants?”
This is beside the point and does not change the core message: that unless they do what Theo wants, we in the free software world will not use their hardware.
So, maybe they legally can’t. Too bad for them; they won’t get our business. It’s no different from flat-out refusing.
If Intel is making it difficult to to obtain a binary for the chipset; just like Sun for their JRE / JDK.
Grow a brain, there is nothing difficult about getting the binary version of JRE/JDK for Linux, neither is there anything hard about getting the source code either.
I have built 5 boxes in the past 2 years; all AMD. Why? Its performance is better than Intel’s, plus it’s cheaper. What more can one ask?
Oh yeah. Boycott Intel. Good luck with that. If every OpenBSD User in the world boycotted, Intel wouldn’t even notice.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the OpenBSD concept, but don’t be so melodramatic. It’s just silly.
For those who haven’t grown brain and was lazy enough to search internet, here are two intel projects for wireless linux drivers:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
Cheers.
Intel was never a company which cared about something else than profits, and will never be.
(The most funniest/annoying thing they did, was the 386-sx, right after their IBM-pc CPU…)
Because i was stupid my first PC was an Intel one, after that, i never had something from them again.
What i really hate is, they the nice DEC NIC technology for their intel pro NICs
I’m not crazy about OpenBSD, but disliking Intel isn’t bound to any kind of people, they are dislikeable for what they are.
Personally most of the kit I encounter ends up
being re-deployed during its life time – often
running open source operating systems.
Having a box that will run ANY operating system
without swapping parts; is frankly convenient
and saves hassle, time and money in the real world.
Anywhere I am involved in a buying decision…
this openness of hardware support WILL be a BIG
factor in selection even at some monetary cost.
Just my thoughts and perhaps I’m alone.
A
No offence, but you do realize how old the D845PEBT2 is and how new the Celeron D is.. no?
For those too presumptious to verify their facts before posting you can get the firmware from here:
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php
But note that it says:
Upon selecting a link above you will be taken to the firmware license agreement. Agreeing to the terms presented on that page will direct your browser to the firmware download.
Which solves zero of the problems mentioned by Theo.
Why should you agree to ANY license? You have bought the hardware and paid for it. Anything else is not covered by that contract. If anything is missing that is required to make the damn thing run, then it’s time to feel betrayed.
Be it legally possible or not, they’re cheating at their customers. One good reason not to buy that crap.
Is it me, or does Theo de Raadt have something of a if Mohammed won’t go to the mountain the mountain must come to Mohammed attitude? This is exactly the same thing as the UltraSPARC III debacle… Theo refuses to jump through any of the hoops corporations require of him then vocally whines when they fail to accomidate him. Want the UltraSPARC III documentation Theo? Sign a goddamn NDA with Sun.
I’ve had several products over the years which required me to download the Windows drivers and grab the firmware files from them, such as Agfa scanners. It’s nothing new. It’s a way of life when you’re using a niche operating system which corporations don’t want to support. If you don’t like it, don’t buy their products, but realize that you won’t be hurting Intel by doing so.
Honestly, all this bellyaching over having to go to Intel’s web site and download the drivers to get the firmware? That takes a whopping 2 minutes. There’s already dozens of commercial programs in the ports tree that require you to manually fetch files. It’s a non-issue.
But I suppose this is what we can expect from the crybaby who mailbombed Jordan Hubbard and the FreeBSD mailing lists when he didn’t get his way. He throws a temper tantrum and tries to get as much publicity as possible, but ultimately nothing is accomplished…
I’ve been boycotting Intel for years. What took you guys so long?
Well they are the only manufacturer of true x86 processors. They make the most stable motherboards i have ever used. Their Land Line NIC cards are very good. Just becasue they won’t release the firmware to their wireless cards which sucks but that will not cause me to boycott their other excellent products.
no, im not offended, I did a smart buy I thougt because the motherboard is a very good one (winning many tests) with good internal sound, Sata & nic, and the cpu was cheaper than a normal p4 with 533 fsb.
the cpu info/support page says it supports my chipset/motherboard. thats why I bought it. maybe my asus pundit machine will with SIS chipset from the same year will work. if it works I will sell the intel mb and never ever buy another one.
regards from stockholm / sweden
>Honestly, all this bellyaching over having to go to Intel’s
>web site and download the drivers to get the firmware? That
>takes a whopping 2 minutes. There’s already dozens of
>commercial programs in the ports tree that require you to
>manually fetch files. It’s a non-issue.
If it were a scanner, or a webcam, that might do. But, please, tell me how are you supposed do go over to Intel’s web site to download the drivers when your network connection wont not work until you go there and do that. It’s catch 22, you see?
Regards,
Nacho.
BTW, I forgot to say I’ve got a Centrino portable running Ubuntu Linux and Wifi ran out of the box, using the free drivers, with no use of click-licenses and no downloading involved (as far as I know).
In fact, when I press ‘submit comment’ this message will fly out that port.
Regards,
.Nacho.
“Well they are the only manufacturer of true x86 processors. They make the most stable motherboards i have ever used. Their Land Line NIC cards are very good. Just becasue they won’t release the firmware to their wireless cards which sucks but that will not cause me to boycott their other excellent products.”
You must work for Intel or have Intel shares to make such moronic comments.
True x86 processors? Exactly who developed X86-64? When it comes to 64 bit x86 then AMD leads the way.
Stable motherboards? You have obviously forgotten the 820 (or was it 810) where the memory was unstable due to a dodgy RDRAM – SDRAM converter.
Lets not forget the Intel CPU that was RECALLED – the 1.13Ghz Pentium 3.
Intel are far from perfect and currently the only superior (eg better features than anyone else) Intel product available is the Pentium-M laptops, due to their excellent power saving properties.
All other Intel products have equivalent products available from other manufacturers, and if Intel costs more then its a waste of money (thats assuming performance is the same).
Only a complete fool would spend extra $$$$ for the Intel brand name.
Well, if you are boycotting Intel over this, I’d like to know who’s graphics cards you actually recommend.
Thought not very fast, the Intel graphics cards are the fastest (and practically only current) 3d cards with open source drivers.
By your logic of disagreeing with this extra and limiting license agreement, surely none of you can be using NVidia or ATI graphics cards with their proprietary 3d drivers.
Are you all using 2d only?
BTW I’m not saying I disagree with protesting against these license agreements, I have no wireless, so I’m just standing on the sidelines here…