Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: Setting up linux computer

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: Setting up linux computer
From: Mark Knecht (markknecht_AT_comcast.net)
Date: Thu Aug 26 2004 - 21:21:56 EEST


On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 11:07, Robert Epprecht wrote:
> martin rumori <lists_AT_rumori.de> writes:
>
> > On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 05:06:53PM +0200, ChristianH wrote:
> >> Why is it so important to load the firmware?
> >>
> >> Do they put in an extra light firmware at the factory, in order to keep
> >> shipping weights low? <gr>
> >
> > to keep shipping weights rather low, they put in NO firmware in some
> > hardware (just a loader). firmware is included with the driver and
> > required to be uploaded to the device on every initialization or at
> > least after every power on.
>
> Which can be very problematic, as some people do take it *very* serious
> with free software and refuse to include firmware which is not under GPL
> or a similar free licence in their distribution...
>
> In my case it was the firmware of a RME Hammerfall card which (some)
> Debian people do not want to distribute... The case made me switch
> from AGNULA/DeMuDi to Planet CCRMA (Which are both excellent audio
> distributions BTW)
>
> Robert Epprecht

To me this is about as silly as Linux people get. (Not you Robert!) The
'firmware' that's being discussed here is stuff that goes in external
hardware. It's not part of the OS and doesn't run on the machine running
Linux. What a silly thing to do in a world full of DSP processors where
most everything is either firmware or downloadable to external
processors of one type or another, to say they won't distribute this
stuff.

I can understand not wanting to polute their source code database, but
not a mentality that says no one should hook a Debian machine to a piece
of hardware that uses proprietary software or that people have to go
other places to get it.

Weird....but then I'm a blatent capitalist with many patents to my name
and working for a start-up IP company that extracts large sums of money
from people all the time for this sort of stuff, so admitedly I'm not a
Debian-head... ;-)

- Mark


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