Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Thu, 5 Oct 2006 08:52:58 -0400
From:      John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
To:        freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org
Cc:        "Constantine A. Murenin" <mureninc@gmail.com>
Subject:   Re: ipw(4) and iwi(4): Intel's Pro Wireless firmware licensing problems
Message-ID:  <200610050852.58943.jhb@freebsd.org>
In-Reply-To: <f34ca13c0610041946h7dfaa05cyf3296798b215405e@mail.gmail.com>
References:  <f34ca13c0610041946h7dfaa05cyf3296798b215405e@mail.gmail.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Wednesday 04 October 2006 22:46, Constantine A. Murenin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> My acquaintance with Unix started with FreeBSD, which I used for quite
> a while before discovering OpenBSD. I now mostly use OpenBSD, and I
> was wondering of how many FreeBSD users are aware about the licensing
> restrictions of Intel Pro Wireless family of wireless adapters?
> 
> Why are none of the manual pages of FreeBSD say anything about why
> Intel Wireless devices do not work by default?
> 
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ipw
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwi
> 
> If you are curious as to why things are the way they are, I suggest
> that you check the problems that are described in the misc@openbsd.org
> mailing list, and contact Intel people and say what you think about
> their user-unfriendly policy in regards to Intel Pro Wireless
> firmwares, which are REQUIRED to be loaded from the OS before the
> device functions, i.e. the OS developers must be allowed to freely
> distribute the firmware in order for the devices to work
> out-of-the-box.
> 
> For some recent information about Intel being an Open Source Fraud,
> see http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=115960734026283&w=2.

Probably because all you have to do is install a port and it works. :)
In FreeBSD installing a port isn't too difficult for users to do.  However,
you might want to ask Theo why he complains about Intel not giving him a
license for one binary blob (Intel wireless firmware) but complains about
Atheros providing a binary blob that he can distribute.  Seems a bit of a
contradiction to me.  However, you probably won't make any headway with
that argument because the other side won't be using reason and logic.

I think in practice that the distinction between a HAL and firmware is
blurry at best.  Both are pre-built software to drive hardware and provide
a simplified interface to software (i.e. OS) for managing the hardware.
The only difference is which portion of RAM that it lives (some RAM chip
on the device or in the RAM of the host computer) and that distinction
really isn't all that noteworthy.  If it's some argument about HAL's
encroaching on space needed by the OS, note that firmware has to be in
host RAM as well so it can be uploaded.  In fact, for iwi(4) and ipw(4)
the drivers keep it around all the time to handle suspend/resume.  The
implementation detail of HAL vs firmware is really just a reflection of
design choices made by the hardware vendor in where to draw the line
between actual hardware vs software to provide their public interface to
system software.  For a software guy to claim that firmware is ok but
HALs mostly just serves to display how ignorant said person is of how
things work over in hardware land IMHO.

At this point I've said way more than I probably should as I have actual
work that I need to be getting done. :)

-- 
John Baldwin



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200610050852.58943.jhb>