Linux Vendor Firmware Service

Could not agree more. I updated my DELL's BIOS and TPM Firmware and it was a breeze! The same goes for my Logitech Unifying receivers (they had some security issue).

And I can see which difference it makes. I still have not patched my other laptop, because I need to extract the image from a Windows installer put it on a USB stick at a specific path (which I always forget...) and then reboot, reboot again because I did not interrupt the boot fast enough, run the update.

Eh, I'm not an expert on this, but as I understand this project is about firmware that needs to be flashed onto devices. The kind of thing where people in the old days formatted a floppy disk and booted from that. So I think your comparison is incorrect.

I would expect more clients to pop up once this gets a bit more traction.

You are comparing two different things. linux-firmware is composed of blob files used by kernel drivers when they do request_firmware(); for devices that load the firmware in RAM and work from that, and have (mostly) no permanent storage.

This project is for firmware blobs that 1/ are already on the device; 2/ for which the update method is traditionally a vendor-provided windows binary; the fwupdmgr incorporates plugins that implement all the different update methods for those devices.

There's nothing maliciously misleading here, and vendors do know the difference between those two.

fwupd is for firmware in external/flashable devices or uefi/bios stuff. the linux-firmware can only install cpu/gpu/everything which loads firmware everytime related firmware.

True, I have. I've sent many hundreds of emails, but also some companies have reached out to me proactively. We're getting there, but it's going to be a slow burn.

Open-sourcing process (that is not part of the culture/structure of manufacturers) and consequences (that provide no direct benefit on the manufacturer industrial bottom line).

Consider: * direct IP & IP on sub-systems, * possibility to reverse firmware-added tweaks (used to make/justify market segmentation).

From the commons point of view, we'd all benefit from open source firmwares. From each and every one manufacturer POV, the associated risk and cost look way bigger than the hypothetical business benefit.

A few points from my own experience: - Competitive advantage. Providing open source drivers/stacks will in many cases provide insight into implementation details you do not want competitors to easily understand. Also, complex software stacks (the generic parts) could be recompiled by a competitor into a "free" stack of their own. Closed source provides a barrier for competitors to entering the market by cheating/stealing.

In addition, all silicon have bugs that you don't always want your competitors to know about by seeing the workarounds in SW. They will use that against you when trying to replace your chip in a product.

- Customer support and liability

With limited customer support resources, you don't want to debug your product for a customer without knowing exactly what code is running. This applies both for the end product and the silicon vendor. As an example - what happens if a modified driver bricks the product?

Assuming that the vendors act as they do out of fear biases causal analysis away from simple business cases. One of those cases is that vendors may have developed their firmware with software that limits the ways the firmware can be distributed. Another case is that vendors may have incorporated software licensed from other companies and that license agreement prevents release of the source code...or more simply the third party software may have been distributed as a binary. Finally, the source code may have been developed with custom or proprietary tooling, build systems, etc. that are not generally available and so releasing the source code doesn't mean that people can use it or understand it.

Theoretically, it is possible to untangle a big ball of string. Theoretically, it is not possible to untangle a big ball of mud.

Richard Hughes works for Red Hat - I think they are sponsoring his time:

https://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/

I don't think it's fair to supect Richard Hughes, who makes the ColorHug (open source/open hardware colorimeter) of trying to encourage proprietary firmware.

This is just a service to encourage up2date firmware, proprietary or not.

In a perfect world there would only be open firmware for all devices. We don't live in such a perfect world, and even Linux users might have e.g. a Logitech unifying receiver. And nobody should disallow them to use one with Linux. Modern Linux comes with a huge set of firmware for e.g. DVB-T sticks or WiFi adapters.

Vendors should be allowed to distribute Linux compatible firmware for their products.

Vendors need a reasonable way to update the firmware, if there are e.g. severe security bugs.

Users should have a reasonable way of getting these updates, without having to constantly monitor all pages for all their devices (and switching over to WIN just to update the via a "Updater Tool v4.732.x").

This is a good thing. It makes peoples' devices more secure. The integration with Gnome is seamless and updating usually simple (it is quite a new thing though, and some specific things can always go wrong). Users are free to chose with which vendors they do business and whom to trust.

I can't help thinking that you should elaborate how you came to that conclusion.

Happy day!