On Tue, 28 Dec 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > > But that's a strange reason to require that the firmware blob on CD be free. > > It's essentially saying "if you can make it hard to modify the firmware, > > you don't need to allow modifications at all". > As always, intent matters.
But most people have several different things in mind when they do something. Intent is rarely a simple all or nothing question. I'm sure that while the manufacturer had lots of reasons to put firmware on a chip, the idea "... and it'll be harder for the users to get at it" crossed people's minds a good many times, even if it wasn't the only reason for doing it. I think the scenario "They moved the firmware from a chip to a CD, so we can't distribute a driver any more" is ridiculous. Any attempt to modify the rules to handle firmware should either fix that situation or else *really* justify why that's desirable. > The > difference with a chip on a card is not that it's difficult to modify, > but that it's not treatable as software! I can't open it in Emacs, so > it isn't software. There are DRM scenarios where you can't open in Emacs something that's obviously software. There are also cases where you could open firmware chips in Emacs (for instance, a BIOS, or a device which has debug commands to dump its own firmware).
