Free Hardware Database (was: Nokia responds to iPhone by Promoting 'Open')

[Torsten Werner]

Hi,

On 10/3/07, Guido Arnold <guido at gnu.org> wrote:
> I haven't checked it, but if they have a FreeBIOS compatible
> motherboard in their collection, this might be the first 100% freed PC
> on the market I have ever seen!

no, because it still ships nonfree firmware in its onboard network
card and even the CPU comes with nonfree microcode. With your
definition of 'free' it will never be possible to build a free
computer.

I have found some interesting quote at
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/cameras: 'Cameras that use the
uvcvideo driver work without proprietary firmware.' That is just not
true. Every camera I am aware of comes with nonfree firmware. Some
cameras just have a (documented or reverse engineered) way to upload
firmware images.


Cheers,
Torsten


-- 
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