18 years of the Linux fork that refuses to load the microcode that mitigates a range of CPU vulnerabilities
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18 years of the Linux fork that refuses to load the microcode that mitigates a range of CPU vulnerabilities
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Never going to stop being angry about the subset of the free software community that would rather pretend that non-free software embedded in hardware doesn't exist than allow that non-free software to be replaced with equivalently non-free software that fixes bugs
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@mjg59 A lot of hardware has to embed non free firmware because incorrect firmware could cause physical damage to the device, and also because there's not really much other firmware it can run.
Most of the embedded firmware hidden out of sight and often not even upgradeable is tiny tiny embedded sequencing and the like or a deeply embedded 8051 running a 40 byte program because it was simpler to paste that in that write custom logic for it
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@etchedpixels @mjg59 the producers could still provide the complete¹ source for that firmware, with the caveat that installing a custom firmware will void any kind of warranty
of course it would be an expense for the producers, and they have zero incentives to do so when even the niche that could have likely to be asking for it and buying from the few producers who did decided to ask for silly “proprietary firmware on a read-only chip” instead.
¹ availability of building tools etc. included
