linux-libre advocacy question

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Mar 29, 2009, Brian Gough <bjg at network-theory.co.uk> wrote:

> Before I heard your talk I had an impression that the "firmware" in
> the Linux kernel was very small -- essentially negligible -- no more
> than a few magic bytes to initialise a device here and there, or small
> data tables.  I did not realise that there were source files with 300k
> of hex data in them, for example.

I see.  Yeah, that's kind of a big difference, isn't it?

Those were the most offensive examples I had, though, which is why I
chose them for the slides, for they're both technically and legally
worrisome.  If that doesn't get someone's attention, I guess nothing
will.


(And just to be clear, it's 300k of data once you turn the hex into
actual bytes; it's some 3-4 times larger than that in the, erhm, "trojan
hource" ;-) form.)

> I don't know where I got this impression - perhaps from the media,
> perhaps from circular reasoning ("Linux is GPLed, GPL means free
> software, therefore Linux is free").  I never really questioned this
> belief because I started out with the assumption that Linux is free.

/me nods strongly

You're right, we ought to work to break this false impression, it is
quite widespread indeed.


Thanks for bringing this very important point to light.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer