Shoddy Open-Source Support Chip Makers Fault
Ever wonder why that latest Linux distro doesn’t play well with your wireless card? A new report by Jem Matzan explains why:
Unrestricted redistribution of firmware files is satisfactory for some open source operating system projects like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and many varieties of GNU/Linux, but others like Fedora Core and Debian demand an entirely free software environment, so redistribution of the firmware without the ability to modify and distribute the source code is prohibited. The standard response to this from the Free Software Foundation is to reverse-engineer the device and provide free firmware. So even though it is very difficult — almost impossible — to do it in the absence of documentation, could such firmware eventually be reverse-engineered? The development team that works on the OpenBSD operating system has a lot of experience with reverse-engineering, but both project leader Theo de Raadt and OpenBSD network driver programmer Jonathan Gray agree that such work would be impractical. Of reverse-engineering firmware and the hardware that it runs on, de Raadt told me, “We can sometimes reverse-engineer how to talk to a device… some are worse than others… but imagine reverse engineering the firmware of 300-400 devices on the market today! Behind their little ARM/MIPS buses, they are a no man’s land of undocumented-ness and bugs; hundreds and hundreds of bugs created almost all by the realities of ‘time-to-market pressures.’”
There’s much more in the report. It’s corporate littering of the hardware landscape - it reminds me of the 1971 anti-littering campaign with the tear-stained Indian. But where’s the geek parody? Where are the crying geeks? We need a tearful geek psa stat! Who will rise to the challenge!?
Hat tip: The Great Giga (Om)
Ubuntu is an African word. It’s also a pretty impressive and user friendly Linux distro. 