Re: kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Alan Cox <alan redhat com>]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2008 at 04:51:51PM -0300, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
> I'm not taking away anyone's choices.  I'm just adding means for
> people to run and distribute Fedora while being more assured they're
> not using or distributing any code they got from Fedora that is
> non-Free Software.

Its a peculiarly perverse interpretation of firmware.

If it is on ROM with the system (and unchangable) you don't mind
If it is uploaded (so hackable) you do mind

The reverse of freedom to tinker really.

There are good reasons to get firmware files out of the kernel binary
(paging, update ease of use, and just clarifying licence vagueness) but
trying to create an incentive to make vendors produce unhackable hardware
is not one of them to my mind.

The other area I find your logic hard is that you simply want to remove
stuff, yet by doing the job properly (using the firmware loader) you'd
get the firmware split out and not have to keep updating your patches
for every kernel there is.

Alan