Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2007 06:32:26 +0100 From: Szilveszter Adam <sziszi@bsd.hu> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: allBSD's "Stop the Blob" Campaign Message-ID: <20070319053226.GA1131@baranyfelhocske.buza.adamsfamily.xx> In-Reply-To: <20070319021903.6e6b93b4@localhost> References: <20070317024923.6d035a41@localhost> <86k5xf91pz.fsf@dwp.des.no> <20070317205350.70f6ecf1@localhost> <86ejnn39e6.fsf@dwp.des.no> <45FC4F45.5030207@skosi.org> <86648z38ct.fsf@dwp.des.no> <20070317221241.13cb1429@localhost> <45FDC2AE.6010608@praxisvermittlung24.de> <20070319021903.6e6b93b4@localhost>
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I tread very carefully here, after all, the area is full of dead horses and I might accidentally commit violence against some of them by beating them up some more... On Mon, Mar 19, 2007 at 02:19:03AM +0100, Jona Joachim wrote: > I followed the discussion on openbsd-misc, that's why I started this > thread, to hear what the FreeBSD folks have to say about it. > It's really unfortunate that FreeBSD-GENERIC ships with that whole > bunch of blobs IMHO. Open source projects that distribute proprietary > software bite their own tail. > I think we agree on the fact that blobs are bad and a lot of other > FreeBSD users share that same opinion. > It would be interesting to hear what the leaders of the projects have > to say about this. Is it more important to support hardware than to > claim the right for free documentation? Are there other interests > involved? > Finally I'd like to remind everyone of the fact that not buying > undocumented hardware is a good way to fight it. I think you are quite misguided when you say that FreeBSD ships with a whole bunch of blobs by default. This comes from the fact that - it seems so to me - many people confuse binary closed-source drivers (the ones that really can be could blobs) and closed-source *firmware*. But the difference is quite there. I do not think anyone should have anything against binary *firmware* Just because firmware is no longer "soldered" into your hardware, but needs to be loaded into it from your HDD every time, it still remains firmware. Just because it is on your filesystem, it still remains firmware. While there are some efforts to produce opensource firmware for certain hardware, there is nothing wrong with using the "original" closed-source one, this poses *no* threat to opensource developers or users. Most of the "blobs" that DES listed in this thread are just that: firmware. If you do not like that, fine, but then start by not buying any machine that has a proprietary BIOS. That will somewhat reduce the selection available to... uhm... yeah. To about 0. Reflashing does not count. The "real" blobs are quite few on FreeBSD, because vendors do not see enough incentive to develop drivers for FreeBSD yet mostly, not even closed-source. The only prominent example would be the Nvidia drivers, which are a) not in any way included by default b) are not required for the operation of FreeBSD itself, but rather are for Xorg. You can of course decide to not use those, but the simple reality is that for some hardware, they are the only way to work somewhat ok. This is so much so, that even Ubuntu decided to include the Nvidia and ATI blob drivers by default into their next release instead of just by direct request. So, even if someone does not like "blobs", they are quite well off on FreeBSD. If you do not use the Nvidia drivers, you are mostly ok unless you use some funky vendor-provided third-party stuff but then it is not FreeBSD's but your responsibility. And no, do not let the OpenBSD propagada mislead you: just because *firmware* is licensed and cannot be freely distributed for some hardware, that does not make it a "blob". -- Regards: Szilveszter ADAM Budapest Hungary
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