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Comment by exe34 | Hacker News Reader

I've read the link from the comment that you refer to: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2018-04/msg00002...

I don't see where they claim that "proprietary blobs stored in ROM is "free", would you care to point it out please? Or were you referring to the opinion piece in the comment that you link? That does not appear to be the official position of the people doing the actual work.

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Here's a part from the "Respects your Freedom" page. The second paragraph explicitly excludes factory loaded and unupgradeable software from consideration.

>All the product software must be free software. The product software includes all software that the seller includes in the product, provides with the product, recommends for use in conjunction with the product, and steers users towards installation in the product.

>However, there is one exception for secondary embedded processors. The exception applies to software delivered inside auxiliary and low-level processors and FPGAs, within which software installation is not intended after the user obtains the product. This can include, for instance, microcode inside a processor, firmware built into an I/O device, or the gate pattern of an FPGA. The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software.

Source: https://ryf.fsf.org/about/criteria

FPGA's are pratically dealt as if the were burned ROMs.

There's no easy way to soft-update an FPGA except for expensive tools to do so. Your bare OS can't do that. A vendor can't update an FPGA based hardware at will.

What's incorrect. FP in FPGA stands for field-programmable. That's the big thing about them - you can easily reprogram them after deployment with minimal effort. Also https://github.com/trabucayre/openFPGALoader

Depends. There are FPGA that can only be programmed once, others a limited amount, and others that have no limit.

You mean with blown fuses? Sure, but that's specific implementation's choice, not an FPGA property. You could also make an SSD read-only with enough effort, but that doesn't describe SSDs in general.

I am noting a limitation. Previous claims might've led some thinking this was not the case for all.

where "minimal effort" might mean soldering wires to a surface mounted chip. for you maybe - my own hands aren't that stable.

That's only if you want to do it externally. The claim was:

> There's no easy way to soft-update an FPGA except for expensive tools to do so.

If the implementation wants to support updating the FPGA then the programming can be wired in the device itself and accessible fully in software. Or even the attached SoC can reprogram it with IAP. (https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/F...)

Basically it's not a technology limitation. It's the choice of the people implementing it - they can make it anywhere from trivial to almost impossible to reprogram.

crucially, it's not a choice for the user, who can treat it as hardware. so free software developers can write code on top of it and pretend it's part of the hardware - not that it's "free" as the poster above was trying to say.

does

> The software in such secondary processors does not count as product software.

mean free (in the GNU sense) to you? I don't think the quote you reproduced means what you think it means.

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