In order to better understand why OpenBSD has decided this is important, KernelTrap approached Theo de Raadt with a few questions. In reply he fully explains the issue, talking about how successful this form of activism has been for OpenBSD in the past, and offering specifics on exactly what they are trying to accomplish. He summarizes, “the open source community has support for all the ethernet chipsets, all the scsi chipsets, all the raid chipsets, so why should we not have support for all the wireless chipsets?”
OpenBSD Works To Open Wireless Chipsets
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Eugenia Loli
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This is *not* about drivers, this is about firmware. And it’s *not* about open source, it’s about getting permission to freely distribute the binaries.
IOW, he’s asking hardware makers to allow him (and others) to put their firmware on OpenBSD CD’s (etc) and thus allowing the hardware to work automatically. As it is now, for many chipsets, the user has to manually get the firmware from the hardware makers website or from a driver CD, accepting a click-thru license etc.
You beat me to it. Thanks for the clarification.
By the way, today is a great day. I just got my 3.6 CD in the mail today and am playing with it right now. I might even install it on a computer later.
i dont understand any vendor having a problem with this, the firmware is useless unless loaded into hardware the vendor sold and anything that might help make a hardware sales i would think would be a “Good Thing”(tm). it isnt like they are asking for source code, and it isnt like the people/companies who would reverse engineer the firmware/hardware cant get it already ignoring the license agreement.
kudos to the obsd guys!
Truth to be told, the only reason I can think of for any manufacteror *not* to allow (re)distribution of their firmware is some kind of money-making agreement with certain operating-system-vendors.
It makes absolutely no sense for a company to simply ignore potential customers — hey, I’m not getting a TI card until I know it’ll work properly on my OS — unless someone is paying them more than those potential customers could.
This *is* about drivers *and* about firmware. From the original article the comments on the Atheros driver exlain precisely:
“it is _not_ possible to include a non-free and binary-only piece of software in a 100% free operating system”
Or to quote the man himself:
“No, these firmwares are not free. Intel for instance is trying to play in the middle zone of ‘a contract lets you redistribute it in a free way’. But that’s not open, free, or anything.”
Unless you can modify and distribute the modified code it isn’t free. That means all these binary-only blobs whether they are “firmware” or part of the driver. The latter is arguably easier and is witnessed by the free-software replacement for the binary only HAL from Atheros.
By the way, today is a great day. I just got my 3.6 CD in the mail today and am playing with it right now. I might even install it on a computer later.
He he – that is one of the best OSnews comments I’ve read 😀
I don’t believe they are looking for the code for the firmwares, just the right to redistribute the firmwares. The code doesn’t matter because it is not run by the OS, just run on the card.
By the way, today is a great day. I just got my 3.6 CD in the mail today and am playing with it right now. I might even install it on a computer later.
After your done playing with it. Maybe you can install the New Version of Open BSD and tell us what its like.<joke>
I would think that these companies would want to have the broadest range of OS compatibility for their harware. I gues sthey are afraid to make money from OSS users.