Re: Exist operating systems that ship without blobs?

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 10:53:21AM -0300, Jorge Luis wrote:
> Theo de Raadt wrote:
> The result is that we end up with additional support because of them. Some
> of them write device drivers, or some of them create pressure against
> vendors and then things become free. And in the end, the whole goal is that
> we can keep on running on stuff that is completely open so that we can see
> it so that we can check it.
> 

Interesting wording there, "some of them create pressure against vendors
and then things become free".  Theo would probably like to *believe*
that the pressure *made* things free but, doubting it, he could not
quite make himself say it.

FWIW, I found that politely asking vendors for documentation worked.
I could not see that OpenBSD's theatrical (you could say terroristic)
tactic of distributing the email addresses and phone numbers of the
employees of vendors, and urging people to hound them, made much
positive difference.

BTW, I think a reasonable precaution to take with a lot of devices,
their firmware and drivers, open- or closed-source (but especially
closed source), is to put them under supervision of, say, an IOMMU.

Dave

-- 
David Young
dyoung%pobox.com@localhost    Urbana, IL    (217) 721-9981