Debian faces firmware furore from FOSS freedom fighters
- Reference: 1650883444
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/04/25/debian_firmware_debate/
- Source link:
Firmware is only called that for historical reasons now, which we'll go into below. It's no longer "firm" at all, it's just files on a disk, like the rest of the OS – but it's unlike OS code in two important ways.
Firstly, it doesn't execute on the CPU. It's uploaded into a peripheral device's RAM, and there it runs on the processors inside the graphics card, or network controller, or radio controller, or whatever.
[2]
The second difference is only important if the OS in question is built from open source. Most firmware is proprietary software, usually supplied by hardware vendors, in the form of binary large objects (blobs). Generally, hardware vendors provide it free of charge because you've already bought their device – they've made their money. But you need it for your hardware to function properly.
[3]
[4]
Open-source OSes are built from openly available source code, compiled with open-source compilers, and distributed under open-source licenses.
In principle, you could inspect all that source and make sure that it does nothing nefarious… if you have the time, budget, and labor force. But nobody has and nobody does; everyone just trusts it. What's more important is that this also means that you can distribute it freely, copy it, run from tens to millions of instances of it without paying, move it between countries and jurisdictions without a problem, and so on.
[5]
This is why open-source distros don't include proprietary apps such as Google Chrome, Skype, Adobe Reader, and so on – because they have terms and conditions attached, to which not everyone agrees, and not everyone is willing to just trust these black-box programs not to, for instance, phone home with usage information.
As above, so below
The snag is that this also applies to firmware blobs. They're not part of the OS. They come from third parties, pre-compiled, with no source code available. They can't be inspected or studied, so there's no knowing what they do or how they do it, and whether they have hidden extra functions you might not want.
If you're running an OS that is mostly or wholly proprietary, such as Windows or macOS, this isn't a big problem: the whole OS is a black box that you've decided to trust. Most computer users don't care, and that's a perfectly valid decision to make.
And because most people are not worried, there are many Linux distributions that take the same line and readily include drivers containing proprietary firmware blobs so that things like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth work immediately, even on the bootable ISO image.
Some people care a great deal about this, though. The GNU Project states [6]why and provides a [7]list of all-free-software distros – and a considerably longer [8]list of disapproved ones. The kernel itself contains some firmware blobs, and there's a special fork of the kernel, [9]Linux-libre , which removes them.
[10]
If you're specifying the hardware, you can omit devices which need such blobs. Puri.sm, vendor of [11]all-FOSS PCs , does exactly that, as well as explaining [12]why . The snag is that [13]its high-end laptop comes with 2009-spec [14]802.11n Wi-Fi.
Some devices do have FOSS firmware, or include it on a ROM chip in the device itself, and Debian [15]includes their firmware. The Debian project also produces separate installation [16]images containing non-free firmware – but as the URL itself says, they are unofficial.
This situation has encouraged meta-distributions of Debian with additional non-free drivers, from simple projects with minimal alterations, such as [17]the Debian Gotham Needs , up to [18]full-fledged distros such as Linux Mint Debian Edition .
The other side of the coin is more extensively modified all-FOSS variants, such as Puri.sm's own [19]PureOS .
[20]Raspberry Pi OS update beefs up security
[21]Chinese distro Deepin hits 20.5, complete with browser called Browser
[22]Rolling Rhino: A rolling-release remix of Ubuntu
[23]The wild world of non-C operating systems
Ubuntu itself began as a meta-distro of Debian. One description of the original mission of Ubuntu was that "their goal is to make it easier to consume Debian Sid ."
Ubuntu itself now has a long [24]list of derivatives, including the all-FOSS blob-free [25]Trisquel .
All this distracts effort away from Debian itself – which some already [26]argue has problems attracting enough developers and maintainers, even without other disagreements such as the one that [27]led to the forking of Devuan .
There is no easy answer to this. The underlying differences are ideological. It's a fact of life that different people have different motivations. Some value purity over convenience, and will happily plug in a USB Wi-Fi adapter, or tolerate slow built-in Wi-Fi, rather than use non-FOSS drivers. Others, reasonably enough, just want to use all the hardware in their computers, even if that means using some proprietary code.
It's extremely rare for distros or projects to successfully merge and combine. The Brazilian Connectiva and French Mandrake [28]joined to become Mandriva , but that now [29]has four separate descendants .
Razor-Qt and LXDE merged [30]to form LXQt , but the Raspberry Pi project [31]forked and continued LXDE as PIXEL .
In theory, it would be ideal if there were some way to appease both the pragmatic and the purists, the systemd advocates and those who abhor it. It would be good for Debian, and that would be good for most desktop Linux users.
Favor either group, though, and you alienate the other.
Why it's called 'firm' and what changed
Decades ago, there was a clear distinction between hardware and software. Hardware meant you could kick it: material, physical kit. Software is just executable data, ones and zeros. You can store it on various media and transmit it to remote locations.
But hardware needs software in it to work at all. Sometimes, that software must be available as soon as the device is turned on. Decades ago, this was built into ROM chips inside the device. That made software tangible and concrete. You could hold in your hand, and kick it if so inclined. But unlike hardware, it can often be replaced. Rewrite the ROM and put a newer version in it. It's not exactly soft ware, and it's not exactly hard ware, so it was dubbed firm ware.
The problem is that these days, if you don't need that software present the moment the computer is powered on, you can save a few cents per unit by omitting the ROM chips, and having the OS load the devices' firmware when they're initialized. It's still firmware, but now the OS on a different processor reads it from a file and uploads it into the device's onboard RAM.
A modern PC or phone isn't a single computer. It's a box containing an assortment of dozens of separate, different computers, networked together. This is true down to the level of chips. Modern Intel processors include a smaller x86 processor-management processor with its own OS ( [32]a version of Minix 3 ), while AMD chips have a System Management Unit (SMU) [33]based on a Lattice Semiconductor Mico32 RISC core.
Probably the only real ROM in your computer is the main one on the motherboard – formerly the BIOS, and more recently UEFI – because without it, your computer won't boot. All the other firmware is loaded when it's needed. As ever, it's more work and causes problems, but it's cheaper that way. ®
Get our [34]Tech Resources
[1] https://blog.einval.com/2022/04/19#firmware-what-do-we-do
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YmbFtp6RwyuCgOm@hhMxKwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YmbFtp6RwyuCgOm@hhMxKwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YmbFtp6RwyuCgOm@hhMxKwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YmbFtp6RwyuCgOm@hhMxKwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-system-distribution-guidelines.html
[7] https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
[8] https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.en.html
[9] https://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YmbFtp6RwyuCgOm@hhMxKwAAAE4&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/19/purism_librem_mini_a_privacyfocused_micro_pc/
[12] https://puri.sm/learn/blobs/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/02/purism_librem_14/
[14] https://puri.sm/posts/purism-decides-qualcomm-atheros-802-11n/
[15] https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open
[16] https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/
[17] https://fiendish.github.io/The-Debian-Gotham-Needs/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/19/linux_mint_debian_edition_5/
[19] https://pureos.net/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/08/raspberry_pi_os/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/04/01/deepin_205_surfaces/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/29/rolling_release_ubuntu_remix/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2022/03/29/non_c_operating_systems/
[24] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives
[25] https://trisquel.info/
[26] https://unixsheikh.com/articles/the-delusions-of-debian.html
[27] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/15/devuan_4_chimaera_released/
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2005/02/24/mandrakesoft_connectiva/
[29] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/15/comparing_the_descendants_of_mandrake/
[30] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/09/new_qt_linux_desktops/
[31] https://www.theregister.com/2016/09/28/raspberry_pi_adds_pixel_eye_candy_to_desktop_to_please_users/
[32] https://www.theregister.com/2017/12/06/intel_management_engine_pwned_by_buffer_overflow
[33] https://fahrplan.events.ccc.de/congress/2014/Fahrplan/events/6103.html
[34] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Where is that service executing and hoisting to where?
Confused by the subject line. There's nothing new here, right ? This is just click bait (or less gate-keepery, a primer) ?
Yes I'm not sure of the exact point of the article. The issue with Debian and firmware has been around for ages, e.g. wifi and graphics on laptops being the most annoying (although this has improved).
It has (a lot), and my own machine is a reasonably recent ThinkPad with Devuan (which did work out of the box).
Yes, this issue is... tricky. On the one hand, it saves a few cents in the BOM, on the other it means you have to trust and distribute foreign, closed-source, unfree (which is more of an issue for some) code. Then, it is now pretty simple to get some "firm"ware update for a device, which in turn again means that it is no longer reasonably immutable, and miscreants can just insert their stuff and let it run undetected - because it is not run under the dupervision of the OS. I am reasonably happy that some people invest their time and energy in this issue, but in the end I am getting too old for this shite, have very limited spare time and want my machine to just work.
(yes, I usually try to check if the hardware is supported by Linux distros)
"On the one hand, it saves a few cents in the BOM, on the other it means you have to trust and distribute foreign, closed-source, unfree (which is more of an issue for some) code."
Look at it in another way. Your alternative is a few more cents on the BOM and having to trust that the firmware that's now immutable is also immaculate.
"The problem is that these days, if you don't need that software present the moment the computer is powered on, you can save a few cents per unit by omitting the ROM chips, and having the OS load the devices' firmware when they're initialized. It's still firmware, but now the OS on a different processor reads it from a file and uploads it into the device's onboard RAM."
The more significant benefit to the H/W user, if not to the vendor, is that by loading the firmware into onboard RAM it can be upgraded without having to replace the ROM or go through the always slightly risky process of flashing an EPROM. The same applies to microcode.
Except for extremely simple peripherals* the choice isn't going to be between firmware and no firmware, it's going to be between firmware that can be upgraded in that fashion and firmware that can't, but even if you choose the latter you're still going to have to trust the vendor.
* If such things are still available you could choose a motherboard with just old-style serial and parallel interfaces. It would at least remove the dilemma because you're not going to have anything on which to load your OS.
Hard choices.
Using my boxes without proprietary blobs would be nice. Reality gets in the way however and some things need the proprietary stuff to work properly.
Take the nvidia drivers in Linux. Nouveau works, not well, but it works. The trouble is if you want to do anything other than basic computing you really need the nvidia drivers.
I am having real problems with nouveau. For some reason my distro which used to install the nvidia driver for your card, if you wanted to use it, doesn't seem to work on my main machine and I'm stuck with nouveau. With that if I try and play a video I get stuttering, nasty artefacts and sometimes it will just slow to a crawl. I have been helped by my distro's forum and one of the suggestions was because my video card is getting old I should get a new one. That's not going to happen. Have you seen the price of new cards? That is if you can get one, and even second-hand ones are currently out of my reach.
My old card is perfectly capable of doing all that I need, all that's holding it back is the FOSS driver I am having to use. So while in theory having FOSS drivers to go along with my FOSS OS would be perfect, sometimes you have to compromise and use the tools that best meet your needs.
I would love to be able to ditch all the proprietary stuff on my machines, that's why I use Linux, but real life keeps me anchored to stuff I can neither examine or entirely trust.
Re: Hard choices.
Yep, that's why I don't buy Nvidia. Somebody [1]had the right idea.
[1] https://i.redd.it/b8dnk9lu33631.jpg
Re: Hard choices.
> doesn't seem to work on my main machine and I'm stuck with nouveau
Same here. Fortunately I don't play graphics-intensive games, so while weak, nouveau is enough for me -- most of the time.
As for the option to change the video card, I'd be grateful if somebody could explain to me how to do that on a laptop...
Re: Hard choices.
An nvidia sticker on the lappie is enough to rule that one out for me.
Of course I don't do big data work. All the relevant Python libraries (that I've heard of) seem to have been written for Cuda rather than OpenCL. :-(
Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
Plan Stupid:
Step 1) Steal under wear Remove firmware.
Step 2) ???
Step 3) All firmware becomes libre.
Plan Sane:
Step 1) Create GPL firmware for devices with documentation.
Step 2) Offer to port firmware to new devices in return for documentation.
Step 3) Create list of hardware with GPL firmware so users can vote with their wallets.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
Unfortunately the people creating the devices that need firmware aren't sufficiently incentivised to care. They don't really want a GPL firmware (GPL perhaps not being the best choice since then it's no good for BSD and such) and since the vast majority of Linux users will just install the proprietary firmware blob and get on with things there's very little demand from consumers even within the Linux community.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
-> Create GPL firmware for devices with documentation.
Why GPL? Oh, because that is what the Linux kernel is. If you don't like GPL give up using ssh.
GPL is a horrible licence. Pick the BSD licence instead.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
GPL is only horrible if you want to take free (libre) code and make it not be free any more. To everyone downstream of pint-pullers (that's bar stewards) like that it's a wonderful license.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
"GPL is only horrible if you want to take free (libre) code and make it not be free any more."
... but thats actually a useful thing to do, isnt it ? Nintendo take BSD, add a shed-load of bits to it, and now my kids have a Switch to play on. It's, no longer Libre, but you can't argue that Nintendo haven't added value doing that, which they can legitimately charge for.
and if I want to download and run BSD, well, I can still do that, so nothing has been taken away from me *shrug*
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
Wouldn't it have been better if the free licence had been retained? After all, it's not the code that they are asking to be paid for.
Oh yes, they want to shoehorn in DRM crap so that they can be a [1]monopsony to the game devs. Without that you could afford more games for your kids.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopsony
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
How dare you mention Nintendo. Penguins should only run TuxRacer on low end graphics cards.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
“ GPL is only horrible if you want to take free (libre) code and make it not be free any more”
Well that’s just plain bollocks.
BSD (to name but one other license) is more “free” than GPL and yet the horrible viral nature of GPL makes it difficult to use GPL code in a BSD context.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
As the line you quoted points out, your BSD isn't guaranteed to stay free. I care about that, seems you don't. We each make our own choice, knowing that there are costs either way. My cost is I don't get proprietary code, your cost is you don't get GPL code.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
How the BSD licence help fix the problem with closed firmware blobs? All it does is allow the manufacturer to copy open-source BSD-licensed code and paste it in to the propriety code and then not distribute anything. How's that going to help the device work with an open-source OS (Linux, BSD, or anything else)?
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
If it means I have a working computer, so what? Some people just don't get it. It's more important to me to have a functioning computer than an earful of pedantry about firmware which I will NEVER look at.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
If you just want a (mostly) working computer and aren't interested in why component manufacturers don't distribute code or drivers to OS developers except MS and Apple then just keep the default Windows 11 install and be happy. You're obviously not the target audience for an open source OS.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
I've used open source OSs for about 25 years now.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
And how do you expect an FOSS OS to talk to black-box hardware where no drivers are made available by the manufacturer?
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
It's called choice, something that some open source advocated only support when it is in their favour. A shiny new world-beating graphics card from Nvidia does not have open source drivers? Use something else. Too many open source people are closed brains. They do not have some equal rights to something they did not create.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
"Some people just don't get it."
You don't get it. The BSD license has enabled too many to bulk copy code into proprietary non-free software and sell it back to the user with very, very little in return. Worse, almost all that is returned back to the "FOSS" paradigm is poisoned and tailored for abuse, simply look at anything Google "gives".
The BSD license like the MIT license once had it's place and served as a needed bridge, but today these common licenses are simply fueling another CEO's yacht cruise.
FOSS is dead. Replace the 'F' with a 'C' for Corporate and you reveal the real beneficiaries.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
-> The BSD license has enabled too many to bulk copy code into proprietary non-free software
And perhaps that is what the authors of that code wanted. The thing with GPL nutcases is they think they have the right to other people's code. GPL is a horrible licence. It is THE incompatible licence.
Re: Fighting the wrong people in the wrong place
About that BSD license. What does it achieve other than keeping your name on the file? I once read an interview with D. Richard Hipp (creator of SQLite) where he said he made his code public domain because he couldn't see a point to BSD.
It's a curious distinction to make
It's a curious distinction to make imo, if the user bought the hardware it seems reasonable to me to assume they trust the vendor. Even as the article states, you have to trust at least the firmware in the BIOS/UEFI for the motherboard.
All machines (PCs, laptops etc) have closed-source firmware running on them. If the device makers suddenly decided to use ROM/EEPROM chips to store firmware again, I can't imagine many users would suddenly just stop buying those devices just because the firmware was baked in.
So to summarise (and I think the article gets at this just in more words), in the case of Debian it's purist thinking whilst ignoring that short of rolling your own hardware (CPU and motherboard included) you can't avoid propriety closed-source firmware.
Re: It's a curious distinction to make
You also have to trust the microcode in the CPU. And long ago if you trusted the microcode that came in the chip but didn't trust OS-downloaded microcode you had a Pentium that couldn't divide correctly.
Re: It's a curious distinction to make
Actually it's worse than that
if I don't install the latest microcode update for my i7-3770, it'll run for about 2 hours before throwing a fault of some sort or the other.
I honestly thought I had a bad CPU before I knew I had to load the intel-microcode package.
Re: It's a curious distinction to make
> short of rolling your own hardware you can't avoid propriety closed-source firmware
That's the gist of the whole problem! Sorry you can't realistically expect Nvidia (or whoever) to bother open source their firmware just for you to feel better, especially if open source purists only make a vanishingly tiny 0.x% fraction of their clientele. They might start considering it if purists made up half their clientele, and there was an open source alternative for potential clients to chose from.
(For the record, I do use one closed source firmware blob on my laptop, because I don't have any uses for an oversized paperweight. Note I did buy this laptop before switching to Linux, and obviously changing hardware isn't an option.)
I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
Also forking = duplication and wasted effort.
Let's go through the Mozilla code and remove all the Mozilla trademark stuff and call the result IceWeasel. The absolute pedantry of these people is pathetic. They haven't advanced their OS at all, they have instead diverted resources to doing this crap, and telling people they did this crap, and bragging they did this crap. Why not just tell people 'use Mozilla'? Don't answer, I already know why. I wonder if any of these nutjobs drives a car from the modern era that has embedded firmware in its parts. If they do, they should be banished from turning up to Debian meetings or told to ride a bicycle or drive an old car instead, lest they be tempted to the dark side of closed firmware.
What I see in this article is something I regularly complain about - the umpteen forks and derivatives in Linux as a whole. The fact that something can be forked does not mean that it should be forked. Rarely do any of these forks or derivatives stand out (Ubuntu is a successful one). The others have low use numbers and rumble along on one cylinder for a while and eventually conk out. It is wasted effort and distracts from what would be more stable and viable 'main' distributions.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
You do know, don't you, that Debian resolved the trademark issues with Mozilla years ago and that IceWeasel and relatives are no longer a thing?
Or maybe you don't.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
The fact they had to go through that at all. In the real world people just get on with things. But don't deny that they did go through the code stripping out all the Mozilla trademarks because it stubbed somebody's toe.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
No. They did it because that is what Mozilla chose to require.
Of course, in the the real world most people ignore licence agreements and "just get on with things". But don't blame Debian when it was Mozilla's choice to require Debian to use a different name.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
Stop trying to rewrite history. It was Debian that insisted on the no-trademarks thing. Mozilla doesn't owe Debian a living. Or anything else.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
At that time, Debian did not include the Firefox logo as it was not re-distributable (trademarked by Mozilla). Therefore they changed the logo for another one. Mozilla didn't like this and told them to distributing Firefox without its logo and to submit all changes made to the codebase to Mozilla for approval, so Debian changed the name of the browser as well.
But this issue has been resolved for several years now.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
-> Mozilla didn't like this
You mean Debian didn't like the licensing terms offered by Mozilla? Pot and kettle. Mozilla did not and does not owe Debian a living.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
But it seemed from Mozilla's response that Debian owed Mozilla a living. This is also not true.
Happily an understanding was reached, but it took about a decade.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
Who would have thunk it, that Mozilla owns the trademarks to Mozilla.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
No, they put more restrictions on distribution than the GPL does. I thought you were in favour of the BSD licence?
You can't argue in favour of the BSD licence and Mozilla's actions.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
I can argue it how I wish. If Debian wishes to use Mozilla's code it has to obey Mozilla's licence. Why is that so hard to understand. It is not the other way round.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
So the same with GPL, so you have no reason to complain about it.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
> duplication and wasted effort.
Indeed, the biggest problem of FOSS is that it is a huge billiard table of colliding egos.
FOSS (and Linux) unfortunately follows the second law of thermodynamics, most resources are wasted in petty fights...
Now don't get me wrong, I'm all about freedom of choice and all, but to my outsider eyes some of the forks sound unnecessary (if not downright conceited). I guess it's just the downside of freedom and thus unavoidable, but it does slow down the evolution of Linux, which could had been the most accomplished and thus dominant OS by now, especially seeing how Windows is going down the drain fast. *shrug*
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
The only difference between FOSS and propriety is you don't see the e-mail chain detailing the colliding egos, but you can still see them in the changes made with each major release.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
"most resources are wasted in petty fights..."
Yes maybe they are, but unless the use of these resource are stopping you from doing something who cares?
People start projects, maintain programs and fork other peoples stuff because they want to. A lot of people are not in it for the money or as a job, they do it for the pleasure of building something that others may appreciate or find useful. Just stopping some of the forks does not mean that the devs will move onto something "more productive".
No one is forcing you to use any of the applications, utilities or OSs that are on offer so why worry about the time and effort other people are putting into their projects. They are not costing you anything in time, money or resources so why all the angst?
See choice is a two way street in FOSS. You have a choice to use or not programs and the devs have the choice in what they decide to work on.
Re: I like Debian, but it has its own share of a*holes too.
Thank you for seeing the light. You perhaps express it a bit more politely than I usually do.
I am in favour of Linux and open source. I am not in favour of having thousands of distros with pointless differences which means duplication of effort. If you read the crap differences between them these people think they have invented a new wheel. One distro has Chromium instead of Firefox. Oh well, that makes all the difference. I had better drop what I am doing straight away and head on over there to this insignificant distro.
Let's all invent a new package manager, cos that's what the world is waiting for. Bob's package manager uses MongoDB which is useful for those people wanting billions of packages installed.
Purity is nice, but where do you stop?
Far better in my opinion to have a friendly encouraging attitude and try to engage device manufacturers and explain why it would be nice if they open sourced the firmware. Then leave it up to them to make a choice whether they do or not, with hopefully enough praise having being given to those that do to make it seem attractive and even a positive selling point (and not piling in with criticism about open source license wars or nitpicking the moment something's discovered to be 0.00000001% non-compliant might help too).
Open souce is a bit of a red herring here. You may believe that having the source lets you have 100% awareness of what's happening inside the hardware. But unless you can inspect a full circuit diagram of all the chips inside it, work out how they work and check that each chip conforms, you have no guarantee that that code''s actually being executed, or doing what you think it does.
It doesn't have to be the OS that loads firmware. It could be a service that does it, and that means you could separate it from the OS if the OS does not do proprietary.