Debian's a wonderful thing. If you're running only the free packages, your right to continue using those packages forever is assured, barring any catastrophic changes in the law.
But what about the software included with our hardware? There's software embedded in SCSI and ATA drive to control cache behavior. There's software driving many monitors' on-screen controls, software in the motion sensing algorithms driving some optical mouse, software in your PC's BIOS, software in your video card's BIOS, a full software emulation layer in many modern CPUs, so on and so on. Looking through the manuals for a few devices, I only find specific license claims limiting ownership or conditions providing for revocation of the embedded software in my hard drive and for the BIOS on my video card and my motherboard. No claims are made on the monitor, mouse or CD-ROM, and I no longer have manuals for the other components. By default, do I have irrevocable rights where software is provided, but no license terms are given? If so, does anyone know of a site listing free or unrestricted hardware? I'm finding nothing but the OpenBIOS project, etc with Google. If not, how far back would one have to look to find peripheral hardware without supporting software on the device (i.e. early MFM drives)? Are there any existing Linux-capable CPU and system board implementations that are fully free? -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
