[Freedombox-discuss] CCC Meeting Notes

[Felipe Sanches]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 3:22 AM, Martin Dluhos <dluhos.martin at gmail.com>wrote:

> > 3) Free Drivers (wifi and bluetooth drivers are closed)
> >
> >     a)Argue with Marvell
> >     b)Reverse Engineer
>
> If I understand your concern correctly, then I disagree that ALL Wifi
> and bluetooth drivers are closed-source. h-node is a database of
> hardware devices that are compatible with a fully free operating system.
> For example, drivers for many Atheros chipsets are free software:
>
> http://www.h-node.com/wifi/catalogue/en/1/1/undef/undef/yes/undef/undef
>
> There are also bluetooth drivers which are free software:
>
>
> http://www.h-node.com/bluetooth/catalogue/en/1/1/undef/undef/yes/undef/undef
>
>
To make it clear, what was actually discussed in the meeting was actually
about software freedom issues regarding not only wifi drivers, but also
firmware. It was argued that lots of wireless devices depend on proprietary
firmware and that we gotta be careful when choosing the hardware for
FreedomBoxes so that it can be run withouth loading proprietary firmware or
that maybe we would depend on reverse engineering efforts to implement
libre-firmware for the devices suitable for the task.

There are cases of devices with libre-drivers but still dependant on loading
proprietary firmware. Using a fully free system (including a fully free
kernel such as LinuxLibre) should be considered an important requirement for
the FreedomBox project.

http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LinuxLibre:Devices_that_require_non-free_firmware
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Linux-libre

Felipe Sanches
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