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

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Mar 23, 2008, Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch at dell.com> wrote:

> Do you have a list of such that you've removed, so we don't need to
> download the kernel and do the diff?

http://www.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/linux/kernel/v2.6/TESTING/deblob-2.6.24
is what I've used to clean up the kernel tarball.  Afterwards, I wrote
a script myself to look for other blobs in the patches, based on the
logic but rewritten so as to give better diagnostics:
http://svn.gnewsense.svnhopper.net/gnewsense/builder/trunk/firmware/find-firmware

The scripts are in the kernel SRPMs themselves, and I know they need
some cleaning up and a license, as trivial as they are.  Feel free to
distribute those without a license under GPLv3+.

> I can understand moving firmware loading to userspace a lot of the
> time,

That's not what this is about.  Moving firmware loading anywhere won't
make the firmware non-Free, it would just paper over the issue.

It doesn't matter where firmware runs, it's still non-Free Software,
it still brings problems to its users.  Countless times I've been
frustrated because of vendors (including Dell) who would ship buggy
BIOS, would refuse to fix it and wouldn't let me fix it myself.

Like buggy BIOS firmware, there's buggy wireless firmware.  As if it
wasn't enough that I was fooled into purchasing a wireless card that
worked with a Free driver but without Free firmware, the firmware is
buggy, the vendor won't fix it and won't let me fix it.

Ask Jim Gettys how many delays OLPC suffered because of the non-Free
firmware in the wireless card.

I don't want to support this vendor behavior, and a 100% Free kernel
is also a way to enlighten people as to these threats and
inconveniences.

> especially when it means you can keep from putting big hunks of
> hex blobs into the kernel tree, for which diffs are meaningless.

Heh.  As if they'd ever change so as to justify a diff :-)

> Fedora allows non-free firmware, as long as it doesn't run on the host
> CPU.

Yup.  That's why people who want a 100% Free Software distro can't
promote or distribute Fedora: this non-Free firmware is included in
the distribution media, so distributing this media amounts to
distributing and promoting non-Free Software.

But then, even if we create a spin without these firmwares, the kernel
still contains non-Free Software.  My goal is to help enable people to
create official Fedora spins that don't contain any non-Free Software.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}