On Jan 26, 2008 8:42 AM, David Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > From: Inaky Perez-Gonzalez <inaky@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 13:28:35 -0800 > > > For example: want to ship new firmware, drivers *and* full validation and > > certification for a product that is already completed just to satisfy a > > fraction of a market which is not part of the designed target? > > > > Do you know how much money that costs? > > I'm glad you guys are the only one's with access to the firmware > source, thus enduring that you can constantly come up with reasons > like this in order to not have to fix the problem. > > You know that if the source were available, the community would have > fixed the bug ages ago. > > But the situation is entirely in Intel's control which is surely > exactly the way they like it. IMO the real problem is not Intel not wanting to free the firmware, but that legal says they can't. The reason why legal would tell them that is due to the attempt to comply to out-of-date regulatory laws which currently exist in different and sometimes in most countries. At least within the US, for example, the laws dealing with new devices like SDRs [1] don't say you can't use FOSS but "warn that the certification will be less likely to be granted if the manufacturer relies 'wholly' on FOSS in building the device" [2]. IMO these laws are just new and regulatory agencies just have no good ideas as to how to properly regulate these type of devices properly yet. My current stance on this issue is to have regulatory bodies shift liability to the user for use of unsupported software. Changing regulatory bodies to embrace this idea will take a while so in the meantime we have to deal with what we have and that is wireless cards coming close to being SDRs but still being certified under part 15 rules and corporate legal teams just wanting to play it safe. So all this is in general is not about vendors not wanting to support us. Its simply the fear uncertainty and doubt game, but the stakes are pretty high for vendors. In the long run my hope is we can get an alliance of wireless vendors going to eventually make a proposal to different legislative bodies to consider changing certification requirements for the sake of advancing these technologies with the community even using FOSS. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_radio [2] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/resources/2007/fcc-sdr-whitepaper.html Luis - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
