Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:52:59 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: Termination of the Philips Webcam Driver (pwc) |
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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.
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