From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Wed Oct 14 17:26:32 1998
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To: alsa-devel@jcu.cz
Subject: Re: Fiji/Pinnacle, previously RE: OMT 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 14 Oct 1998 09:37:03 PDT."
             <01BDF756.339F2DC0@pc-61-95.at.ds.philips.com> 
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1998 11:24:38 -0300
From: Paul Barton-Davis <pbd@op.net>
Reply-To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Sender: alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz
Precedence: list

> The Pinnacle/Fijii divers are *NOT* free software, as you'd have
> to use Turtle Beach firmware, which is not free, and is only
> distributed by TB without sources.

This is hardly a reasonable classification.

First of all, even if you had the source, I doubt that you would have
a compiler that could compile it for the Motorola as instantiated on
TB's soundcards. Secondly, firmware is firmware. There are Linux
platforms that use microcode - does this mean that Linux on these
platforms is not "free" because it relies on software that doesn't
come with source code ?

TB make their firmware (cost-) freely available to purchasers of their
soundcards, as well as just about anyone else via their website. To
bemoan not getting firmware source just seems absurd to me: the
firmware should be considered part of the hardware platform the driver
is controlling - immutable. Its hard enough to write a driver for
these cards these days, the idea that anyone would want to hack the
firmware is so far out of reach as to be irrelevant to me.

--pbd (Linux TB WaveFront driver author)

