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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - Hardware / Software - OpenBSD 3.9 release eminent, a little article about blobs |
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FreeDOS + Giant Red Koopa Legion: freedos = fritos                   Since: 11-17-05 From: Seattle Last post: 5907 days Last view: 5907 days |
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| OpenBSD, the world's most secure operating system, is about to be released at version 3.9, on May 1. Along with the new nfe (NVIDIA nForce Ethernet) driver, the main driving point in OpenBSD posters and the song is the problem of blobs. Let's talk about blobs!
What are blobs? Simply put, blobs are binary-only non-free drivers provided by hardware manufacturers to hide secrets. It is much easier to keep secrets about protocols and hardware inside binary drivers instead of source code. Why are blobs bad? On a moral standpoint, through the use and acceptance of blobs, you are willing to give up software freedom, and even hardware freedom. Most hardware vendors aren't likely to support your fancy sound card on a HPPA platform, you are more likely to be forced to use the card only on an i386 (possibly amd64) platform. You are not able to fix bugs in blobs, your only option is to hope that someone in the company has encountered the same bugs. You are not able to audit blobs, security problems are very likely to be ignored. You might not even be legally allowed to redistribute blobs or use them in commercial environments. One rather infamous example is the graphics industry, there's pretty much only two companies making next-generation cards: ATI and NVIDIA. In both examples, users are either forced to use blobs or to rely on reverse-engineered drivers that are difficult to maintain due to lack of interest, and quick developments making it very hard to support newer cards. The ATI problem has so far been partially addressed (DRI, r300.sf.net), while the NVIDIA problem is extremely ignored (nouveau.sf.ne) What can be done to battle the blobs? There are quite a few ways to help defend against these blobs. One of the most significant ways to help, of course, is to develop free drivers for all to use. This is not as easy as it is said, you will need significant experience programming, and experience writing drivers is also a benefit (though you have to start somewhere!). If you're not a programmer and care about software and hardware freedom, you can actively refuse to use blobs, encourage developers to not accept blobs (thereby someone with the knowledge might write a free driver), and even encourage the companies to stop hiding behind blobs and release documentation and source code (under a free license, a license that does not allow studying from the source code (thereby non-free) is very bad!). What has OpenBSD itself done to fight blobs? One way that OpenBSD has battled blobs is by educating people about the problem. But perhaps one of the more recognizable moves is the number of drivers they have written which replace existing blobs. One of the headlights of OpenBSD 3.9 is the inclusion of the brand-new nfe, NVIDIA nForce Ethernet, driver (NetBSD has already ported it to their operating system to replace the blob). It doesn't end there: ixgb, em, bge, ral, axe, rtw, emu, lge, ciss, pciide, etc. These are all free drivers to use on hardware that previously required blobs (more about the specific drivers are available in the manual section 4); and this is only the list of drivers new (or vastly improved) in OpenBSD 3.9! There's dozens of drivers culmulated from across the years of blob-fighting; OpenBSD is widely tuted as the best open source operating system to use with a wireless ethernet card, and this is mostly due to their anti-blob attitude. The OpenBSD family of developers works hard for your hardware to work blob-free, for your right to use it how you want, where you want. Ethernet (wired or wireless), RAID, SCSI, SATA, USB, IEEE-1394 (aka Firewire®), video, sound, you name it, OpenBSD either already supports it or they will work hard so you don't have to use blobs! Do other operating systems fight the blobs? Usually not to the extent that OpenBSD does it. Even the other BSD projects (FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFlyBSD) do not mind blobs. Most Linux developers and users have a particularly bad habit of adopting blobs (eg, the graphics market; also ndiswrapper for using MS-Windows networking blobs on Linux). Sun Solaris itself remains non-free in certain parts of the operating system, despite their OpenSolaris campaign; the company has asked NVIDIA to make blobs for nForce and GeForce. One notable exception in the blob-happy world is Haiku, an open source operating system cloning BeOS; Haiku has written many drivers from scratch instead of using BeOS blobs, one notable example is their work in a free 3D NVIDIA video driver for BeOS/Haiku. OpenBSD Homepage: http://www.OpenBSD.org OpenBSD 3.9 Release: http://openbsd.org/39.html Purchase OpenBSD (CD-ROMs and other material): http://openbsd.org/orders.html - - Copyright © 2006 Mike Swanson. Redistribution and use, with or without modification, is permitted provided that the copyright notice is retained, modified copies are not presented as original, and this list of conditions is retained. (edited by BSD-Addict on 04-29-06 02:50 AM) |
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