OpenBSD Journal

Firmware licensing updates

Contributed by grey on from the making progress but not finished dept.

As you can read here, in the last 4 days Theo got 2 firmwares freed up, and he says that a few other vendors are having friendly discussions likely leading up to freeing the firmware! However, you'll note that TI has yet to contact Theo, but as you can read about here it looks like we can redouble our efforts on one TI contact:

Update #2: Theo believes that we may now have better luck with this TI contact instead of Randy Roberson:

Bill Carney director of business development, bcarney@ti.com WNBU, +1 707 521 3069

Again, please let other people know too. Post to your blog, post to news sites you may have access to and get the word out! The undeadly editors will also be making attempts to work with other OSS focused news sites as well. Of course, it never hurts to remind people of some good tips on advocacy when writing.

Update: Activism pays off for OpenBSD (The Age, Australia, u/p undeadly)

(Comments are closed)


Comments
  1. By submicron (64.207.228.140) subicron@inherently-evil.net on

    Remember that if you're going to email these people, don't do so demanding anything. Be polite, succinct and to the point. Nothing helps dispell the strongly held belief that open source advocates are zealots like a flurry of very polite, well-reasoned requests for a company to open their specs. Be an advocate for your favorite project(s), not a zealot, and these vendors may be much more willing to open their products now and in the future.

  2. Comments
    1. By janus (145.243.187.17) on

      ...same issue with the link posted below.

      Comments
      1. By Anonymous Coward (145.243.187.17) on

        the link in the other post is the resulting link if you log in.

  3. By kami petersen (217.215.10.111) on

    the article without registration.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (82.82.82.174) on

    Why this side blow to Linux/Linus?

    Wouldn't it be better to get Linus and the Linux people in the same boat? Theo said, that he is disappointed. So why does he not ask Linus to join in the effort for free (re)distributable rights for the vendor's firmware? Did he ever mailed Linus about the issue and ask him to take part in the negotiations with the vendors?

    Comments
    1. By Anonymous Coward (68.148.237.181) on

      > Wouldn't it be better to get Linus and the Linux people in the same boat? Theo said, that he is disappointed. So why does he not ask Linus to join in the effort for free (re)distributable rights for the vendor's firmware? Did he ever mailed Linus about the issue and ask him to take part in the negotiations with the vendors?

      If Linus is a leader for Linux and have Linux named after him, why then
      would Theo have to mail Linus and ask him to join? Shouldn't Linus go
      and Lead? It's still not too late to take advantage of this momentum,
      so let's see what Linus and the Linux crowd will do or just talk about
      it all.

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