Giacomo Catenazzi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > But there is annother difficult. To write BIOS we use assembler because > we have much control to hardware, to write microcode I think they don't > use any language, to be more direct. They write (maybe) directly the bit > or byte. Thus there exists only binary files, so for DFSG: no source.
There probably is a source, but the compiler is probably top secret and proprietary, so the source wouldn't be very useful to people outside Intel. > But: I can convince Intel to change the microcode license in a more > liberal way, but I would never convince Intel to put documentation > on microcode and to put microcode DFSG. > Thus I think the first step is to have microcode so much free > that it can be included in debian non-free. Yes, definitely. The microcode will probably never be DFSG-free, but please do try and get it into non-free. > Then we must improve Linux (kernel) and Open Source enought to > convince hardware manufacters to release microcodes and documentations > in a DFSG compatible manner. Maybe, but there would be very little practical benefit from having DFSG-free microcode. Most of the arguments for free software don't really apply to microcode. I work for a company that designs microprocessors, so I might be interested in reading the microcode source, if I could get my hands on it legally without signing an NDA, but I very much doubt anyone would want to distribute modified versions of it, for example. Edmund
