Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc)

Linus Torvalds
2004-08-27T22:03:09Z

On Fri, 27 Aug 2004, Anton Altaparmakov wrote:
>
> So how come we allow drivers which load binary firmware into the kernel?
> And there are plenty of them...

Beause firmware is a clearly separate part.

It's not a part of the kernel at all - it doesn't even run on the same
CPU, for christ sake! Firmware if anything is _further_ removed from the
kernel than user programs are.

> There isn't very much difference between binary firmware and the binary
> module in this case.

Go back and read this same thread three or four months ago. You are
barking up the wrong tree. There is a HUGE difference between a binary
kernel module running inside the kernel, and a firmware image running on
another CPU entirely behind a bridge.

There's a huge conceptual separation, but there's also an actual
_physical_ separation. How much different do you want things to be?

Firmware on a device is logically equivalent to the kernel running on
another machine entirely. A USB device firmware is from a logical (and
technical) standpoint not really any different than a fileserver running
on a different computer.

Linus