Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Alan Cox <alan redhat com>]

On Mon, Jun 09, 2008 at 02:54:07PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> license or by copyright law.  As I stated before, it's a moral,
> ethical and social issue, even if it's also a negligible legal issue.

It is an interface between two systems.

Consider a typical PC system

You can load the CPU firmware updates by

- Having the BIOS load it
- Having the kernel load it
- Having user space apps load it

That block could be
 - residing at an address in ROM
 - residing at an address in RAM used by the BIOS
 - residing at an address attached to the kernel image
 - residing at an address attached to the initrd image

Thats the sole difference - the address it appears at.

Exactly why does the address in RAM change the "morality" of the
distribution. Or would you like try equivocating around "good PC bad Linux"
v "Good Linux Bad PC" depending who distributes which bit.

Do you buy an "evil" widget with ROM binary firmware or a "good" widget
with no proprietary code included that needs an "evil" OS product ?

We are *not* talking about two tightly bound pieces of code here but
general interfaces. The moment you've got a driver and firmware very
closely tied together and sharing structure to the point they were clearly
written and designed as one thing its a bit different yes.

You also complain about the attitude of the kernel developers - well generally
speaking we happened to write the code in question....

Alan