On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 4:45 PM, Martin Hanson <greencopperm...@yandex.com> wrote: > Yes, it can be argued that since we cannot get any open hardware at all it doesn't matter whether the firmware is located on a ROM or if it's installed by the kernel, but if we use that logic we might as well just use whatever binary driver blob the vendors make for everything, right? > > If no, then why not, what's the difference between running closed source firmware and closed source drivers?
The difference is, closed source firmware runs on the device itself and if it's buggy, generally the most it will do is make the device appear to be non-functional or unreliable. An open-source driver can detect a device malfunction and handle it (or if it doesn't it can potentially be modified to do so). A closed source driver runs as part of the kernel and has ready access to all parts of the kernel, and even user memory. A buggy driver could merely cause the device to appear to work improperly (if you're lucky), or it could corrupt kernel memory in subtle ways causing unrelated parts of the system to fail after an indeterminate amount of time has passed, and in such a situation there is little you can do to reasonably fix the problem without driver source except to remove the driver. Clearly the second situation (closed driver) is the worse one to be in, and from a practical perspective, the first one is nearly unavoidable nowadays. Even my mouse has closed-source firmware in it and there is little point in putting an extra prompt in the installer that shows up depending on whether my firmware is pre-installed in a ROM or not. Because let's be clear here, that's what that prompt signaled. Not that your device may be using non-free firmware, but rather that your device doesn't store its firmware on-board but needs to have it loaded. Maybe someday we will have virtual kernels running in user mode jails where we can safely run closed driver blobs without risking the rest of the kernel, and if that ever happens then maybe closed driver blobs might be OK. If you absolutely refuse to use non-free hardware then the prompt will not save you -- all a vendor has to do to evade the prompt is put their firmware in ROM. Your only solution here is dligent research and careful choice of vendors, and if you're doing that then the prompt isn't needed anyway. So the prompt was ignored by the people who don't care, and ineffective for the people who do care, and therefore useless. -ken
