documenting devices that require non-free firmware on Linux

Felipe Sanches juca at members.fsf.org
Sun Mar 7 10:26:30 UTC 2010


I've created the suggested non-free firmware warning.
http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/LinuxLibre:Template

Is it good?

-- Felipe Sanches

On Sun, Mar 7, 2010 at 6:21 AM, Karl Goetz <karl at kgoetz.id.au> wrote:
> On Sun, 7 Mar 2010 11:50:01 +0300
> Dmitry Samoyloff <dsamoyloff at yandex.ru> wrote:
>
>> Karl Goetz wrote:
>> > On Sat, 6 Mar 2010 23:41:48 -0300
>> >
>> > Felipe Sanches <juca at members.fsf.org> wrote:
>> > > >> =Where are the non-free firmware images made available?=
>> > > >> (usually here we would want an url to the manufacturer's
>> > > >> firmware download webpage)
>> > > >
>> > > > Should we be linking to this? It seems contrary to the
>> > > > guidelines used for all other projects related to gnu.
>> > >
>> > > yes. I know the guidelines disallow it. But in this specific
>> > > case, I think that it is important to have this info. Because it
>> > > can help developers of the free alternatives since access to the
>> > > non-free firmware is a pre-requisite for reverse engineering it.
>> > > Also, developers might want to run the driver using the non-free
>> > > firmware to better understand how the device works. "The only
>> > > legitimate use of non-free software is in the development of its
>> > > free replacement." was once said to me by Alexandre Oliva.
>> >
>> > This is a valid point. Can the template be updated so it includes a
>> > warning about only using it for reverse engineering (etc), and a
>> > link to a suitable site?  (I know there is a page about this on
>> > fsf/gnu.org, but i can't find it)
>> > kk
>>
>> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/categories.html#ProprietarySoftware
>>
>
> thanks,
> kk
>
> --
> Karl Goetz, (Kamping_Kaiser / VK5FOSS)
> Debian contributor / gNewSense Maintainer
> http://www.kgoetz.id.au
> No, I won't join your social networking group
>
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