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| DATE | 2006-05-23 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [rick@linuxmafia.com: Re: [Balug-talk] [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Its a sorry day for The Linux?Journal]
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Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 13:13:44 -0700
From: Rick Moen
To: balug-talk-at-lists.balug.org
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X-Mas: Bah humbug.
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Subject: Re: [Balug-talk] [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Its a sorry day for The
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Quoting Matt Thrailkill (matt-at-modestolan.com):
> I don't think Richard Stallman or Theo De Raadt would tolerate binary
> modules even when they are legal.
And "tolerate" means what specifically, in this context? (Would you
mind being an order of magnitude more specific?) File a lawsuit? Storm
the walls of nVidia, Inc.? Launch a jihad?
Theo lead the charge to remove all proprietary djbware from OpenBSD
packages (see: http://linuxmafia.com/pub/humour/dan-versus-theo). By
contrast, neither Richard nor Linus heads a "distribution" project
that is in a position to make such decisions.
So, what would them not "tolerating" a piece of proprietary software
constitute for Richard or Linus, in concrete terms, Matt?
> I'm not really interested in the legal discussion. Its irrelevant.
Ah, you'd rather bloviate vaguely (and inaccurately) about other
people's morals. I see.
> I can't think of a response to this. If Linus can't be taken to be a
> figurehead of the open source movement, then I don't know who is.
So, let's back up: The term "open source" in the software context was
invented, and has been promoted for many years, by the founders,
directors, and spokesmen of the Open Source Initiative. If you were
trying to find a characteristic statement from a primary open source
spokesman, you would have your pick of a couple of dozen such people,
all articulate and with long track records in public.
Torvalds has no particular connection with the OSI whatsoever, and has
never particularly purported to speak for "open source". He's a coder
and the architect of the Linux kernel. Yet you chose him -- and it
turns out that, even at that, what he said did not even support your
assertion in any way.
So, I merely note that, in addition to having failed to support your
assertion through quotation, the person quoted seems oddly selected, in
a fashion likely to make one wonder why you didn't pick a more-obvious
and on-point person to quote. Perhaps it was because you couldn't find
anything, and were grasping at straws?
[Torvalds:]
> I am only positting that by not rejecting binary modules altogether
> (although he makes them difficult to use by not having a stable kABI,
> but even that is for pragmatic and not moral reasons) Linus is choosing
> his position on the issue more for pragmatic issues than ethical ones.
Rejecting them from _what specifically_? From the kernel? There are no
binary-only modules in kernel.org kernels. There are some
fireware-equivalent BLOBs. Torvalds has put the authors of such code on
notice that they're skating on thin ice legally and are running the
considerable risk of being sued by the kernel coders for copyright
infringement, if they cannot prove that their inclusions are in no way
derivative works of the main kernel code.
However, that's all documented in the cited LKML excerpts that you say
you're _unwilling to read_ because they're purely "pragmatic" and you'd
rather burble ignorantly about other people's morals.
> > And how _are_ your ROMs doing, these days, Matt?
>
> Is this an ad hominem attack?
No, this is a factual question: Do your ROMs contain proprietary
firmware?
Mine do. I can live with that because they are not general-purpose code
and are OS-neutral.
My old Lucent Gold Orinoco 802.11b card contains proprietary code in its
firmware. Some day, I'll have to find a replacement, and one leading
candidate is the series of cards based on Intersil's PrismII 802.11g
chipset family. Intersil sought to save money on ROM circuitry, and
therefore distributed OS-neutral code functionally comparable to the
Lucent ROM code, as a binary BLOB in publicly distributed driver
software. Naturally, this driver software was packaged for MS-Windows,
but any OS that generically lobbed the BLOB into RAM in a fairly obvious
fashion (such as, say, the Linux kernel's hotplug subsystem) will
thereby initialise the cards in exactly the same way the Lucent's ROM
code does, during power-up.
This has lead to a number of instruction sites and PrismII firmware
BLOB download locations on the Net, including this one:
http://www.red-bean.com/~proski/firmware/readme.html
(Intersil, probably through sheer carelessness and lack of clue, failed
to issue explicit redistribution permission for that firmware image
file. It no longer exists, and its successor in interest, Conexant, has
shown no interest in resolving its grey-area legal status. However, for
purposes of this discussion, please disregard the technical copyright
infringement committed by sites like Pavel Roskin's, above, as that is
irrelevant to my larger point.)
So, since you didn't get the point of my original question, here's the
same one in a slightly different, more pointed form:
1a) Should I morally object to the Prism II OS-neutral initialisation
code's provision as a binary BLOB?
1b) Should I morally object to the Lucent's ROM code for the same reason?
1c) Does the same moral objection apply with equal force to all the
other motherboard BIOS and option-ROM firmware code in your and my
system?
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