Re: 04/04: gnu: Add fwupd.

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org>]

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Hi,

On Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:26:21 -0400
Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
> > commit 23152ff70f0ed4966d8207846f54c793d7cb4f86
> > Author: Petr Hodina <phodina@protonmail.com>
> > AuthorDate: Tue Jan 4 06:58:51 2022 +0100
> >
> >     gnu: Add fwupd.
> >     
> >     * gnu/packages/firmware.scm (fwupd): New variable.
> >     
> >     Signed-off-by: Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
> 
> Just a quick question: does this tool talks to a remote server that
> serves non-free software as well as free one?  If so, it'd need to be
> patched to comply with the FSDG.
It does.

By default it at least uses the LVFS repository which has nonfree
software. I don't remember if it also has other repositories or if
there was a way to easily download updates from the repository
without fwupd or LVFS.

It is at least possible to search for specific software in LVFS at this
address: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=microcode

You also have UEFI updates and so on there, so it's pretty clear that
there is some nonfree software.

And we actually have the opposite issue here: It is way harder to find
firmware updates that are fully free and that they can at least in
theory be built with 100% free software on top of FSDG compliant
distributions.

Maybe small free software firmwares like the colorhug firmware could be
OK. Somebody would need to check the dependencies for build the
firmware update.

Bigger firmwares like with firmwares using Coreboot are probably not
OK because while coreboot is under the GPL, to work on recent
hardware nonfree software is likely to be used (like microcode updates,
Intel FSP, nonfree AGESA, etc).

Denis.

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