Just to clarify my participation in this thread -- On Sat, Jan 23, 2016 at 1:34 AM, Alberto Salvia Novella <es204904...@gmail.com> wrote: > Joel Rees: >> >> "Modern" CPUs have plenty of spare register space, most of it >> undocumented. Register space can be used to record something of state, >> allowing instruction streams to be self-parsing. > > > Anyway I think this falls mostly in the hardware side.
I think you are making an artificial distinction between hardware and software. That is, you seem to see a bright line where I don't see a line, and you seem to call some things hardware that I would not. I still prefer to call ROMmed design elements "firmware", and still prefer to group firmware with software, making the distinction that firmware is write-protected by hardware. Other lines of distinction are generally promoted by salescrews with an axe to grind (proprietary pseudo-solution to sell). And the ability to clear the write protection by software makes firmware infirm, so to speak. Re-writing CPU microcode and BIOS code, including boot-time drivers and codec definitions, is dangerous, and shrouding it in secrecy and cryptographic mumbo-jumbo is just the old sales line of "trust me", which Ken Thompson explained the weakness of in his classic (and deliberately incomplete) Reflections on Trusting Trust. > I liked microcode to > be libre too, Sure, microcode should also be free-as-in-freedom. I am definitely not arguing against that idea. I'm just saying you seemed to be promoting microcode for something it can't do, back a ways there. Your description of microcode as somehow less "executable" and more "declarative" than something also didn't sit well. (It is both. You cant separate operation from definition.) > but I'm postponing that goal for later. As my main goal now is > software to be libre. Okay with that, as long as we don't promote the idea of a single standard solution to graphics. Monoculture pretty much undoes the advantages of freedom. > When libre software is the standard, then I will start talking about libre > hardware. No problem with your focus on software, although I personally won't believe we've won much as long as Intel (and now AMD again) and others hide any kind of code, including the hardware and firmware. > Have a nice day. You have a nice day, too. -- Joel Rees Be careful when you look at conspiracy. Arm yourself with knowledge of yourself, as well: http://reiisi.blogspot.jp/2011/10/conspiracy-theories.html
