A "Large Hardware Vendor" Wants A EULA Displayed For Firmware Updates On Linux

[phoron]

By the way, if each user has to accept a firmware EULA, how does it work in hardware used by more than one person? Does LVFS have to display one button for each user, all users get together and press their buttons or the firmware update is not installed? Does LVFS have to remember which user accepted and not and update to newer or older firmware at user login (always to the last firmware each user accepted) ? does the hardware have to know which request is from each user (there might be two users at once at the machine) and then load one or other firmware version according to the user making the request ? Does the EULA say that one user pinkly promises that he has the agreement of all other users for the EULA, even the ones she does not know yet because they have not been hired, and they all agree to the EULA ? How do proprietary multiuser applications do it ? What when you sell the hardware second hand ?

[r1348]

But does this vendor have a reason for their request? Or is it just because?

My educated guess is: legal department overreach.

[k1e0x]

"Large Hardware Vendor" is probably scared to death they will push software what bricks peoples devices and want users to agree to no class action + don't sue us + arbitration only.

Should they or do they need that.. I think no? The general convention in software is it is provided without warranty. If that ever changes.. the software industry as a whole is going to be in major pain.

[phoron]

Mountain from a mole hill. We're talking about a single "click" to accept one firmware package. This isn't exactly a burden to anyone, except you it sounds like.

That's because I do read the EULA. And it takes time, specially in foreign languages. And if I had 100 employees I wouldn't like them to have a reason to spend
2 hours each reading an EULA and some deciding not to click because they don't like it, or because they don't finish reading, or whatever.

But you just pretend it's OK to agree to unknown terms. That's your option I guess.

[pal666]

Do you have to agree again to the license each time you update? even if the software updates itself on its own (OTA) ?

eclipse requires you to agree even to open source licenses on every plugin upgrade. some apps ask for agreement only if license text was changed since last agreement

[Veto]

Mountain from a mole hill. We're talking about a single "click" to accept one firmware package. This isn't exactly a burden to anyone, except you it sounds like.

You know, that you are supposed to *read* the EULA before "clicking"??

... And although nobody does that, that is really the core of the issue. These fricking EULA's are assuming an unreasonable burden of the end users to read all this legalese, just so the lawyers can get their ass coverage or worse. For what you know, you may already have "clicked" away the parental right to your children and whatnot. As an example, in the beginning the iPhone requires you to read ~60 pages of text at each firmware udate. That was just plain crazy and should be illegal!

So IMHO it is quite OK to provide automated firmware distribution to cooperative vendors and letting the user-fiendish vendors do it themselves...

[pal666]

Whenever an individual in a pack thinks their use case is more special than others', I'd urge them to either reconsider or make an argument for their case.

how do you know they didn't make an argument?

[phoron]

I am going to guess that what's going on here is that nVidia is willing to let Nouveau use signed proprietary firmware with reclocking support but that it includes code from a third party that will only let this happen if the end user accepts the EULA.

But that's just your imagination, isn't it ?

Obviously I'm going to prefer AMD cards for Free Software reasons over nVidia ones, but imagine it-- Full performance Nouveau out of the box on Linux distros with just a EULA acceptance by the end user for the firmware. And to that I say, I'd rather use their firmware than their whole crappy driver for which I'd have to accept a EULA anyways.

So my vote is yes, even though I plan to buy AMD to avoid agreeing to the EULA in question.

I don't understand, they could do whatever they want without using LVFS if what they need doesn't fit the general problem LVFS solves.
They could even maybe fork it. I don't see this case is a reason to accept the change into LVFS and the have all firmware vendors encouraged
to overwhelm end users with unreasonable EULAs.

Reducing the amount of proprietary binary code on a system is an improvement for security and auditability and if firmware runs on the card itself and not on the CPU like the driver, standardizing firmware delivery to allow other drivers to pull it is a huge win.

So really we should all think of it this way, I assert: What if this is how we get reclocking support in Noveau?

What if LVFS rejects the change and NVIDIA decides to write a free replacement firmware and publish it for Nouveau to use and we get reclocking without blobs and then even you buy an NVIDIA card ? Win - win - win !
It's all very hipothetical (your story and mine), I'm afraid.

[r3pek]

By the way, if each user has to accept a firmware EULA, how does it work in hardware used by more than one person? Does LVFS have to display one button for each user, all users get together and press their buttons or the firmware update is not installed? Does LVFS have to remember which user accepted and not and update to newer or older firmware at user login (always to the last firmware each user accepted) ? does the hardware have to know which request is from each user (there might be two users at once at the machine) and then load one or other firmware version according to the user making the request ? Does the EULA say that one user pinkly promises that he has the agreement of all other users for the EULA, even the ones she does not know yet because they have not been hired, and they all agree to the EULA ? How do proprietary multiuser applications do it ? What when you sell the hardware second hand ?

hummmm firmware? After getting "flashed" it's done, there's no per-user firmware? What are you guys talking about? People just look like they never upgraded a BIOS or a SSD firmware ever! You know Windows have multiple users too right? Damn... trying to find problems where there aren't any.

[pal666]

Redhat will have him implement this feature anyway, probably hidden behind a "--with-eula-requiring-firmware" (renamed to something innocent sounding, of course) switch.

i suspect it will make your ass burn, but i'm not sure why exactly