I'm pretty sure OLPC was supposed to be open source so that people could use them to learn programming, with a nice library of examples to learn from.
More pragmatically, closed-source drivers in an open-source OS are a terrible idea; they always lag behind the kernel. I remember, back in 2000, at an IETF meeting, I borrowed an 802.11b card for my laptop, only to discover that the only driver available worked only with an old version of the kernel. Said version had had a security bug so serious, Red Hat had warned users not to use it on any system with a network.
However, I suspect de Raadt is mainly upset because this means BSD won't be able to run on the OLPC.
Having read all the referenced pages, it does look to me as if de Raadt is overreacting. Marvell's mesh feature is useful, and they genuinely can't release the current firmware as open source, but they are letting it be redistributed, and they are permitting OLPC to develop an open-source replacement. They won't publish the specs for the hardware (OLPC will have to sign an NDA to write the replacement firmware), but even RMS admits that signing an NDA could be ethical, as long as they resulting software is free (as in freedom, of course).
In fact, it's not clear to me what proprietary hardware de Raadt is complaining about. He might be assuming that the SD controller (also from Marvell) is locked down; and, in fact, their original chip was. But, at OLPC's request, Marvell has already developed a new SD controller that complies with the SD Forum's publicly-available HCI spec, so that the Linux hdci driver (part of the kernel as of 2.6.17) will work with it. AMD has released the Geode's VSA (basically an in-chip emulation layer, like Transmeta's LongRun), minus the VESA part that they didn't own (and which OLPC doesn't need). Aside from those, the only device de Raadt identifies as requiring an NDA is the camera--not exactly an essential component.
de Raadt says, "If I am careful in selection, I can buy a laptop on the market today that has fewer proprietary parts."; but fewer than one sounds really unlikely. Oh, and the 2B1 runs LinuxBIOS; *no* other laptop on the market can say that.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
John Stracke @ Oct 11th 2006 10:46AM
I'm pretty sure OLPC was supposed to be open source so that people could use them to learn programming, with a nice library of examples to learn from.
More pragmatically, closed-source drivers in an open-source OS are a terrible idea; they always lag behind the kernel. I remember, back in 2000, at an IETF meeting, I borrowed an 802.11b card for my laptop, only to discover that the only driver available worked only with an old version of the kernel. Said version had had a security bug so serious, Red Hat had warned users not to use it on any system with a network.
However, I suspect de Raadt is mainly upset because this means BSD won't be able to run on the OLPC.
John Stracke @ Oct 11th 2006 12:38PM
Having read all the referenced pages, it does look to me as if de Raadt is overreacting. Marvell's mesh feature is useful, and they genuinely can't release the current firmware as open source, but they are letting it be redistributed, and they are permitting OLPC to develop an open-source replacement. They won't publish the specs for the hardware (OLPC will have to sign an NDA to write the replacement firmware), but even RMS admits that signing an NDA could be ethical, as long as they resulting software is free (as in freedom, of course).
In fact, it's not clear to me what proprietary hardware de Raadt is complaining about. He might be assuming that the SD controller (also from Marvell) is locked down; and, in fact, their original chip was. But, at OLPC's request, Marvell has already developed a new SD controller that complies with the SD Forum's publicly-available HCI spec, so that the Linux hdci driver (part of the kernel as of 2.6.17) will work with it. AMD has released the Geode's VSA (basically an in-chip emulation layer, like Transmeta's LongRun), minus the VESA part that they didn't own (and which OLPC doesn't need). Aside from those, the only device de Raadt identifies as requiring an NDA is the camera--not exactly an essential component.
de Raadt says, "If I am careful in selection, I can buy a laptop on the market today that has fewer proprietary parts."; but fewer than one sounds really unlikely. Oh, and the 2B1 runs LinuxBIOS; *no* other laptop on the market can say that.