A lot of drivers for hardware are actually not open source, just unreadable binaries that do …something. No one knows exactly how they work, so some people consider them a security risk.
While I do understand the security aspect of this here at the same time those people seem to be delusional. At some point there’s proprietary stuff in our computers, be it a driver, a BIOS or the code that runs on the various microcontrollers that run low level functions from the USB ports to simple power management.
The most “security paranoid” organizations in the world usually run a lot of stuff on Windows and HP hardware full of opaque and proprietary code and they consider it “safe enough”.
I may get that not free / license based stuff might raise concerns if you aren’t a mega corp. that can pay the fee either way, but… if a trackpad requires a free but closed-source binary driver why would a random guy on the internet consider that to be a risk?
Depending on the vendor providing that trackpad driver it may not be a substantial security risk. But it is a loss of software freedom, which some people care about.
Yeah, sure, but if the largest companies in the world trust the vendor that proprietary firmware why would I not trust it?
I agree with your POV, in theory yes, having stuff you can’t inspect it’s a risk, in practice there are a few more nuances to that. It’s not reasonable to want to have a 100% open-source computer from the software to use down to the AVRs/PICs that run low level functions.
You explanation sums it all up thanks.
While I do understand the security aspect of this here at the same time those people seem to be delusional. At some point there’s proprietary stuff in our computers, be it a driver, a BIOS or the code that runs on the various microcontrollers that run low level functions from the USB ports to simple power management.
The most “security paranoid” organizations in the world usually run a lot of stuff on Windows and HP hardware full of opaque and proprietary code and they consider it “safe enough”.
I may get that not free / license based stuff might raise concerns if you aren’t a mega corp. that can pay the fee either way, but… if a trackpad requires a free but closed-source binary driver why would a random guy on the internet consider that to be a risk?
Depending on the vendor providing that trackpad driver it may not be a substantial security risk. But it is a loss of software freedom, which some people care about.
Yeah, sure, but if the largest companies in the world trust the vendor that proprietary firmware why would I not trust it?
I agree with your POV, in theory yes, having stuff you can’t inspect it’s a risk, in practice there are a few more nuances to that. It’s not reasonable to want to have a 100% open-source computer from the software to use down to the AVRs/PICs that run low level functions.