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Wireless Networking Operating Systems Security Hardware BSD

Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism 121

Posted by timothy from the why-how-and-thank-you dept.
An anonymous reader writes "KernelTrap has an insightful interview with OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt, discussing their recent activism to try and open up wireless chipsets. In the interview, Theo discusses what has been accomplished so far, the difficulties involved, and why such efforts are important to all free and open source operating systems."
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Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism More

Theo de Raadt On Firmware Activism

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  • All chipsets (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 9-bits.tk ( 751823 )
    should be open. Really, it's very narrow-minded of the chipset manufacturers to not consider the possibility of people using F/OSS operating systems instead of propietary.

    • Open Cores? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cpghost ( 719344 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:50AM (#10710058) Homepage

      [All chipsets] should be open. Really, it's very narrow-minded of the chipset manufacturers to not consider the possibility of people using F/OSS operating systems instead of propietary.

      All chipsets should be open. Really, it's very narrow-minded of the chipset manufacturers to not consider the possibility of dust or humidity settling or condensing on the open raw chip. Plastic cases are there for some reason, ya know?

      Now Open Cores would be great! But as long as we don't have a home chip manufacturing unit (say, like a printer or so), we won't be able to use the source code anyway (though some of us could find out about hidden functionality etc...).

      What we do need now are open specifications, both electrical and functional: What do you need to write to Pins 3-29 and what does the result on Pins 30-35 mean? This kind of stuff ought to be open!

      • But as long as we don't have a home chip manufacturing unit
        ever heard of a FPGA? Or even a CPLD. These things are not expensive at all.

      • Now Open Cores would be great! But as long as we don't have a home chip manufacturing unit

        Oh come on, you're acting like you don't know about FPGAs [wikipedia.org] (quite cheap from many vendors, my favourite is xilinx [xilinx.com]). These chips can be totally reprogrammed and many of them now come with soft cores. Awfully configurable. These things are in the process of a revolution in firmware/embedded systems for flexibility and updating. Forget about uploading new data to flash memory; you can easily, cheaply, and reliably upda

  • Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by isometrick ( 817436 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @09:51AM (#10709669)
    I don't understand what companies have to lose by open-sourcing firmware or software that goes with hardware.

    They make money on the hardware, not the software ... right?

    • Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      In fact, they lose money on having to develop the firmware. They would be better of if they released the specs of what hardware is in there, and had the F/OSS community develop the firmware and drivers.

      They won't do that, though. I've heard people say that they are afraid this will make it easier to reverse-engineer there hardware, and that is somehow a Bad Thing. Personally, I think it's easier to design hardware from scratch than to look at the interface exposed by another piece of hardware and design yo

    • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by nbert ( 785663 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:02AM (#10709760) Homepage Journal
      IIRC it's not up to them, because some FCC rules prevent completely OS firmware drivers.
      The FCC is basically afraid that someone could modify the code in a way which would lead to a wlan device operating out of spec.
      But that's just what I read some time ago...

      • Re:Why not? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by awehttam ( 779031 )
        So why are there drivers for Atheros based cards?

        • Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by nbert ( 785663 )

          There is nothing special about OS *drivers* for wlan cards. My Netgear MA101 runs fine on linux with the at76c503a driver [berlios.de], which is under the GPL. But the *firmware* is closed source.

          Needless to say that the chip manufacturers put all the interesting stuff into the firmware, so the driver isn't really much worth (don't get me wrong - I'm actually happy about it. Otherwise wlan on Linux would be even more complicated)

      • ... some FCC rules prevent completely OS firmware drivers.

        Let's assume you're right. Your point would be irrelevant, since they aren't being asked to open-source, but to make their closed source firmware freely distributable.

        And, I think you're wrong.

      • I think that you have been lied to. see here [theaimsgroup.com] (and the discussion that ensues).

    • Re:Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ralusp ( 115432 )
      Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that FCC regulations come into play here. These devices are considered wireless radios, and they are approved by the FCC to operate on specific frequencies with specific power levels. Having open sourced firmware could allow modifications to these parameters, such that the devices no longer conform to FCC regulations. This is why several wireless chipsets have open source drivers, but none have open source firmware. Thus, the best we can do at t

      • As you asked - you're utterly wrong. (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The firmware that OpenBSD wants is the binary code that gets uploaded into the card and run on the card's onboard CPU.

        Thet don't want to obtain that firmware's source. They want distribution rights to include the unchanged firmware in their open-source drivers. That firmware is already "free" to download from the web and extract, or extract from the Windows driver on the CD bundled with the card, but OpenBSD wants to cut to the chase and just have drivers that work first time from their install CD.

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:25AM (#10709907)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • This honestly doesn't matter. If I lop off the antenna on my cellphone and put some kind of directional thing on it instead, chances are it's breaking FCC rules too. That doesn't mean Nokia or Motorola are breaking the law by making cellphones.

          If Nokia or Motorola make it too easy for you to replace the antenna, then they are indeed breaking the law, at least in the USA. Radio transmitters here are heavily regulated, and both use and sale of unapproved transmitters is illegal (with certain exceptions -

      • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Technician ( 215283 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:31AM (#10709938)
        and they are approved by the FCC to operate on specific frequencies with specific power levels.

        It's like the days of CB radio. Early PLL sets had an easy to access PLL divide by N counter. Feeding it vales other than what the dial provided permitted illegal operation. Later to prevent lawsuits, the divide by N counter had a pre-programmed interface front end. The channel number was input and the divide by N was done internally. It made for more complex chips, but made out of band operation much easier.

        Some WiFi chip manufactures may have the same choices. The user interface software may take the chosen channel selection and set the chip PLL to the correct divide by N ratio. The advantage is if later the FCC opens more frequencies, a simple driver update will put the chip on the new frequencies. With OSS, renagades may ditch the FCC permitted channels and find a "channel" without neithborhood interferance and not seen by the wardrivers for additional security. The chip manufacture could be held liable for enabling the out of band operation. The chip manufacture could do like the CB radio chip manufactures later did and do the divide by N table in the chip instead of in the driver software.. Now you have a chip that can become instantly obsolete if/when the FCC opens more bandwidth. The chip costs more to manufacture to boot. In a comptetive market this is a bad thing.

        • In 802.11 and other Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum radio equipment, ALL frequencies in a broad spectrum are used simultaneously at lower power. The "Channel" is really a virtual channel, and not like the narrow band of Citizens Band spectrum that CB each radio channel uses. Instead, DSSS channels are different Spreading codes governing how the broad spectrum is encoded by the transmitter and then decoded by the reciever to distinguish signal from noise. The signal profile at different frequencies reinforc

      • Re:Why not? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by DoctorPepper ( 92269 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:50AM (#10710067)
        I see your point, and you're half-right. The equipment is type-accepted to operate at a certain power level on a certain frequency, but there is nothing in the FCC regs stating that the firmware has to be closed source. After all, there is really nothing (except the fear of a hefty fine and/or jail time) preventing a person from buying a type-accepted radio at Wal-Mart and modifying it to put out more power, or to transmit on a different frequency band. These radios are not "black boxes", so neither should be the firmware.

        My own thoughts on as to why they are closed source leans more towards trade secrets.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @10:28AM (#10709921)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Firmware for many modern devices is encumbered by license restrictions beyond the hardware vendor's control. Look at the MP3 player. A manufacturer selling a player that can do MP3 and WMA must not only pay the Fraunhofer tax, but also pay Microsoft for the WMA codec. If the firmware is designed around an RTOS, then there's that too. While most copies of firmware are useless on hardware other than the vendor's, the possibility that a freely redistributable binary will provoke the ire of the owners of th
  • "The idea being to let the vendors know that there is a large concerned user base that is going to decide how they will spend their money based on the vendor's willingness to work with open source software."

    Not only for themselves, but in how they make recommendations for their companies... TI (and other vendors) may not care about that one extra unit sold, but they'll certainly be looking at the corporations that might purchase thousands of units.
  • Isn't there a problem here, that while a closed source redistributable binary is fine for use with *BSD, it cannot be linked into the Linux kernel because the GPL requires you to distribute source for anything that is so linked...?
    • It's actually much more the other way around, but I see why you're confused.

      The BSD license permits the use of the covered software in closed-source projects (it just mandates an acknowledgement). The GPL does not permit this - if you link with a GPLed work, the result must be GPLed, too (at least if you redistribute it).

      Now, for the kernels, the situation is a quite different. The BSDs are very puritan in that they only allow BSD licensed code in the kernel, whereas Linux is more pragmatic in that it all

    • Isn't there a problem here, that while a closed source redistributable binary is fine for use with *BSD, it cannot be linked into the Linux kernel because the GPL requires you to distribute source for anything that is so linked...?

      This is not a part that is supposed to be linked into the kernel proper (at least not as executable code), but firmware for a different chip on the board of the WLAN NIC.

      Look at it this way: You used to have the firmware on a chip as closed source and you didn't even blink. N

      • What changed is that it is incorporated into that driver. If it is stored as a separate file and loaded from the filesystem after it is mounted, it seems reasonable (it would come under the 'mere aggregation' clause of the GPL, as mentioned by another poster), but my understanding is that this is not how the Linux kernel currently works.

        The firmware would have to be incorporated into the kernel module, which means that the firmware's source code would have to be distributed.

        The offending portion of the G
    • the firmware does not need to be linked into the driver. you can store it in a separate file. this is how the centrino driver works. it may be convenient to link it in, so it's all one piece, but that is not a requirement for it to work. a gpl driver can read a file off the disk and stuff it into the card just the same as any other driver.

      since the linux kernel is not executing the firmware either, in the context of that program, the firmware is not software. it's only binary data that cannot be inter

  • Worth reading TFA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Len Budney ( 787422 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @09:57AM (#10709714)

    ...if only to see a pic of the guy who causes such a ruckus.

    Otherwise, the interview is extremely tame. He alludes to the "corporate ways of Linux vendors", but doesn't give vent to any interesting rants.

    De Raadt raises one interesting question, though, when he says, "in other cases we have had to resort to activism. An example of this was Qlogic...for a few years we did ship this code without being aware of the issue. But after a few mails to Art at Qlogic, and a threat to remove their code from our upcoming release, they decided to let us include the firmware in our operating systems."

    The question is: how is this "activism"? He states that they used Qlogic SCSI firmware inadvertantly, and when asked to stop, threatened to comply with the request. That's "activism"?

    • He states that they used Qlogic SCSI firmware inadvertantly, and when asked to stop, threatened to comply with the request. That's "activism"?

      I didn't read it like that: I interpreted it as "Theo et al thought the firmware was free enough to include in OpenBSD. When they became aware that it wasn't they contacted Qlogic, who eventually conceded and now the firmware is free enough."

      In other words, the threat to stop was made by OpenBSD, not Qlogic. I think!

    • ...if only to see a pic of the guy who causes such a ruckus.

      Yeah, for some reason I had this picture of him with "Einstein" hair and his eyes WAY to wide like he had just consumed 15 cups of coffee. He actually looks like a normal person...

    • That's "activism"?

      It's catering to what the proprietors want you to do--become more dependent on their products and work under their licenses. Ultimately, the copyright holder holds the power. In the Qlogic example, it was not any "threat" that gave Qlogic incentive to do what it did. de Raadt is trying to make this seem like OpenBSD held the power in this relationship. Qlogic realized that it had the opportunity to avoid a minor PR hassle and simultaneously not forgo sales of its hardware when it

      • No. It's activism. A lot of people communicated their concerns to those companies and a majority of them have had their *decision makers* open a dialog with Theo and we are now getting results. Does it go as far as you personally want? Obviously not. But at least it's progress instead of the "suck it up and accept being inconvenienced" that you espouse. Even RMS compromises. Look at how parts of Ogg Vorbis got relicensed to promote adoption of the standard.

        And just out of curiosity what totally free hardwa

  • To keep average Slashdot reader on track... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by codguy ( 629138 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @09:59AM (#10709734)

    Since most Slashdot readers will not RTFA before commenting, let me clearly point out that this is *not* about wanting the companies involved to open up their source code for use by OSS. It is simply requesting that the existing firmware be freely distributable by OSS without onerous conditions.

    For A.D.D. and no-RTFA Slashdot readers/commenters, let me repeat that this is simply about being able to freely distribute an already compiled (e.g. binary) version of the firmware. OpenBSD is *not* asking for the source code.

    Loosely speaking, the firmware in question is already freely available--you just go to the website and download it. But that doesn't help when you are loading a distro. If you *only* have a wireless connection, this is a chicken-or-the-egg problem. You can't go to the website to download the firmware because your wireless NIC won't work without the firmware. Yeah, there are many possible workarounds, but by simply allowing the firmware to be freely distributable without onerous licensing terms, the wireless NIC can work right off the bat.

    Unless your foresight is amazingly shallow, or simply a Theo-hater, note that this will benefit *all* OSS, and not just OpenBSD.

    --codguy
    • ... note that this will benefit *all* OSS, and not just OpenBSD.

      Well, except for Debian, which does not distribute non-free software at all. It might distribute a script to easily download and install te binary firmware, but that is allready possible today.

      Jan

    • What other proprietary software would also "benefit" "open source" operating systems? Since this is all being done in the name of convenience for the user, why not admit it and ship more software that the user might find convenient so the OpenBSD system is even more useful out of the box?

      As much as the OpenBSD team cares about making software that commercial developers can build on (even to make proprietary derivatives), these proprietary firmware packages will not be available under such terms. There wi
      • the firmware does not need to be linked into the linux kernel. you can write a driver that reads it off disk. at least if it's free, it can be put onto the same floppy or cd image as the kernel and you can use it to install.

      • Re:Let's push freedom aside for convenience. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ComputerSlicer23 ( 516509 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @12:52PM (#10711562)
        When such firmware is built into the Linux kernel, that variant of the kernel becomes non-redistributable because one can't meet the terms of the GNU GPL
        Here [slashdot.org] you claimed to understand that this wasn't a matter of being a part of the driver.

        You are being silly. Go read up on the definition of "derived work" and "linking". Then read the GPL very closely. You'll notice that the firmware of a PCI card doesn't even execute on the same CPU architecture, let alone in the same address space (the rule of thumb amout if you are "linking" or not). When you get done figuring that out, realize that because the firmware was independently developed outside of the Linux kernel, and it works completely independently of the Linux kernel, it's not a derived work. Thus it's pretty much in the free and clear of all GPL issues. The actual binary bits in the kernel you are free to change to your hearts content with full GPL rights.

        That's why firmware can be inside of the Linux kernel now. Some people want to move it outside of the Linux kernel (for both technical and political reasons). The technical being, that you can upgrade the firmware without re-compiling your kernel, and it shrinks the size of the kernel to not have it statically compiled in. The political is that so dolts like you don't say "That's a GPL violation". It isn't. The firmware isn't a derived work, and it isn't a linking to a GPL'ed piece of code. It's just data as far as the kernel is concerned. Just like the C code that passes thru a GCC is just data. Yes technically speaking it is source code, but it's just data. It's just like saying, well in order to initialize this card, you have to write a "0x80" to this port to get it configured correctly. In this case, instead of a single byte, it could be a 10-64k chunk of bytes. It's the same thing. They are going to make it blazingly obvious by moving it outside of the source tree so it acts just like the GCC code does in every single way. Then we can finally be finished with this argument. That's why the 2.6 kernel is building all of the infrastructure so that firmware can be loaded from user space. Then as long as the vendors say the firmware can be distributed for free, it's all good (which is what Theo is attempting to make happen).

        Even if the OpenBSD and Linux people got the source to the firmware GPL'ed, there's no way in hell they'd ship source you had to compile. You'd still get a binary distributed to you. That would require you to have a development tool chain for whatever language (compiler for the language, assembler for the target architecture, and possibly a linker for the object format). Some or all of which literally might not exist outside of the company. It's not like Adaptec is using an x86 OBJ from C source for writting it's firmware. They might, but I wouldn't be shocked to find out they use a PIC with a propriatry C compiler from an embedded vendor. That would be a dependency the Linux kernel folks wouldn't allow for building a kernel.

        Kirby

  • I hope that Linux&FreeBSD users will join (Score:5, Interesting)

    by renoX ( 11677 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @09:59AM (#10709736)
    Whatever one may think on Theo, I think that he is right here: firmware which cannot be redistributed by distribution are a *pain* for the users.

    I hope that Linux&FreeBSD users will join this movement because the more users requests hardware-makers to allow redistribution of firmware, the better!

    Also, I think that this movement should not be restricted to wireless HW, I have a speedtouch ADSL modem where there is a similar situation: firmware may not be redistributed.

    This is very annoying when you want to install a distribution.. I think that Mandrake managed to get the rights to redistribute this firmware, but they shouldn't be the only one to have this right..

    • Getting a SpeedTouch adsl modem working on mandrake is an absolute BUGGER to set up.

      It never bloody connects properly.

      • Ever since my mandrake update borked my Netgear MA311v2 wireless nic. I have exactly the chicken egg problem: can't get the next update w/out the connectivity. I even tried 10.1 Community with no luck. OpenBSD always had great NIC support, but I got tired of dealing with chroot on my webserver (different machine) when I wanted to add gallery and other dynamic page processing stuff, so I switched both to Mandrake. Now I'm considering putting OpenBSD on my non-critical desktop to get the wirelss NIC support a

  • Theo? Activism? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PornMaster ( 749461 )
    Whoda thunk it?
  • From a story [theage.com.au] linked in the article:

    [Theo de Raadt] said he found it sad that the Linux crowd did not help in the activism at all. "(They) always seem to talk about freedom but are not helping in this activism. It's basically BSD people doing it. That is curious. For instance, do you think Linus (Torvalds) would send a mail to TI? No, I would bet money that he did not. Yet he is aware of what is going on. That's very odd to me."

    I honor the efforts of the OpenBSD projects and Theo de Raadt, but this is ch

    • Re:Theo de Raadt at its best? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by agent dero ( 680753 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @11:11AM (#10710223) Homepage
      "He created the currently most distributed free operating system, did he?"

      No, he created a kernel, he created a GPL licensed, monolithic and modular kernel.
      Linux is _just_ a kernel

      I'll have to stick by Theo on this one, there is a lot of whining about Nvidia binary drivers for their video cards, but that seems to be all it is, whining.

      Theo is doing something about it, whether or not you agree with his cause, he is _doing_ something at least.
      • I'll have to stick by Theo on this one, there is a lot of whining about Nvidia binary drivers for their video cards, but that seems to be all it is, whining.


        uh, there are open-source drivers available as well. And what do you suggest that Linux-folks should do? Deliberatly sabotage the kernel in such way that closed-source NVIDIA-drivers don't work?

        Disclaimer: I think Theo is an arrogant asshole.
        • "Disclaimer: I think Theo is an arrogant asshole."

          Correction, I've worked on a couple OpenBSD forks that can confirm, that yes, Theo is an arrogant asshole.

          He does however, stick to what he believes in, a very respectable trait ;)
          • I actually started one of these, and I think
            Theo is arrogant, but not totally of an asshole.

            Especially the recent interview showed me some
            other sides of Theo reminding me of myself:

            http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/07/1097089476 28 7.html?oneclick=true
            (if it wants registration, use a better browser,
            such as lynx, then you'll see it directly)
      • No, he created a kernel, he created a GPL licensed, monolithic and modular kernel.
        Linux is _just_ a kernel

        By definition of the word Operating system, you're right. Still, though free kernels and user land utilities existed well before Linux, it was his project that kicked off a lot of development around open source operating systems.

        Without Linus there would be no Linux, and that's the simple truth.

        As FreeBSD [freebsd.org] user I am well aware of the diversity of ongoing efforts delivering us the final product of a f

    • I honor the efforts of the OpenBSD projects and Theo de Raadt, but this is childish behaviour. I don't think one could deny that Linus does propagate the idea of free software. He created the currently most distributed free operating system, did he?

      Of course, de Raadt did not claim that Linus has not done enough to "propagate the idea of free software." He was talking about the firmware fight. Keep knocking over those strawmen!

      Speaking like that of the Linux crowd at whole is ignorant.

      I guess it's a goo

    • "He [Linus] created the currently most distributed free operating system, did he?"

      No, he didn't. He wrote a large part of the Linux kernel, which is combined with GNU software to produce an operating system. This distinction is what gets RMS hopping mad.

      The kernel is only one part of (Open|Free|Net)BSD. The *BSDs are operating systems because they include userland tools.
    • if you don't like what he said about linux users, i recommend you prove him wrong by actually doing something about it. say, like trying to contact some people at TI to free up the firmware, instead of whining about mean theo is.
  • to see people out there really pushing hardware co's to open up and increase their potential client base... you think this would be something they would undertake on their own...

  • Theo and the other Gods of BSD ;-) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by petrus4 ( 213815 ) on Wednesday November 03, 2004 @11:27AM (#10710381) Homepage Journal
    I haven't read all that much about de Raadt...a few interviews mostly, I'll confess. What I have read though I've felt pretty positive about, myself. Yes, he's rather prickly/sensitive, and deeply strange, but those are two characteristics that are commonly associated with people who are abnormally intelligent.

    It's true from most of what I've read that the BSD dev crew *do* seem to see themselves as one of the last holdouts of human intelligence. The thing is though, the evidence would tend to suggest that they're almost certainly correct in thinking that. ;-)

    Have a look through bsd.ports.mk and its associated files (as one example) at some point if you don't believe me...I found myself being reminded of Wayne and Garth's reaction to Steven Tyler when I did. ("We're not worthy, we're not worthy!" etc)

    It's made me think that the old crack about LSD and BSD is true...though not from the point of view of the BSD developers taking it themselves, but from the point of view of them being sufficiently intelligent that the rest of us would need to consume LSD in order to keep up with them. ;-)
  • Of all the things I did NOT expect in this life, I think the least likely would be to ever see the term "firmware activism."

    Man, that's like Suffrage for Spoons, or something.

  • Can someone please hack the firmware of a dvd burner so that it can create DVDs that will play in a PS2 (homebrew games, copied games, whatever) ??

    I mean, most of us have mod chips, but will someobody please think of the children?!?!?

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