"Managing" and "talking to an API" are not mutually exclusive though.
Yes, firmware has continuously become more complex. Yes, if you go back far enough (quite a long ways) there wasn't any.
Peripherals have always been a black box that increased in complexity over time. That increase in complexity does not imply a decrease in management complexity on the part of the kernel. Far from it! Modern device drivers are far from simple.
> They're not our devices anymore. They're intel's, nvidia's.
This is arguably true, but it is also a rather separate topic of discussion.
> They dictate how we use them.
That's largely only in theory. Now if you had said that Apple or Samsung were dictating how we use our phones I would have been inclined to agree. But I don't think gating certain features in the CPU or GPU for the purpose of market segmentation qualifies as dictating how I use my device. I don't like the practice, but I can't deny that I am able to use the APIs provided by the device in an arbitrary manner without it phoning home to the manufacturer or otherwise authorizing the specifics of their use.
> But the OS is not the one sending those signals.
Depending on how you define "sending those signals" and where you consider the boundary between sender and receiver to be you could reasonably argue that the OS never did that to begin with, or alternatively that it has always done so and still does. It's really quite arbitrary and depends entirely on where you consider the boundary of the device to lie.
I purchase a peripheral. It is a black box that implements some device or manufacturer specific API. The kernel has a device driver that abstracts over this and provides a generic userspace API that will (hopefully) remain relatively stable for multiple decades. That's the extent of the contract and that hasn't changed at all.
The device driver situation is already nearly unmanageable. Imagine how much worse it would be if the kernel needed to manage every last minute hardware detail down to the model and even sub-model variants. For example, for every USB mouse and keyboard, past and present. And that's before we even consider things like the firmware for the USB controller on the mouse, which in all likelihood is its own modularized unit from an entirely different manufacturer. But we're going to need to account for every last detail of that ourselves if we fully commit to the "all opaque firmware bad" route. After all, for the kernel to "truly" be in control of the hardware I suppose it will need to manually manage every last pin that falls under software control.
Technical accuracy and nuance is really quite important here. There are many different nefarious things happening at once. Conflating them only serves to confuse the discussion and leads people to (wrongly) believe that there's no need to worry about those weirdos ranting and raving in the corner.
> That increase in complexity does not imply a decrease in management complexity on the part of the kernel.
Complexity is not the point. Control is. The operating system should be in complete control of the system, and it isn't.
Complexity is part of the reason for that. The actual hardware is exceedingly complex, so manufacturers simplify it with firmware that presents a more convenient API.
That's convenient but it means we are no longer in control of the hardware. We merely interface with the convenient abstraction presented to us. It's that abstraction which actually drives the hardware, not our "drivers".
And that obviously becomes a mechanism by which to control us. Access to perfectly good hardware could be denied by the firmware for unacceptable reasons such as market segmentation or copyright enforcement.
> But I don't think gating certain features in the CPU or GPU for the purpose of market segmentation qualifies as dictating how I use my device.
BS. I want to copy stuff. It's not letting me. It's that simple. Some nonsense about "protected video paths".
The hardware is working and able but a fundamental computer operation cannot be performed because the firmware doesn't want to. Computer says no.
> The device driver situation is already nearly unmanageable. Imagine how much worse it would be if the kernel needed to manage every last minute hardware detail down to the model and even sub-model variants.
If that's the cost of maintaining control, we should pay it gladly. Better than growing comfortable with the manufacturer's convenient abstraction which also conveniently allows them to control what we do with "our" machines.
> There are many different nefarious things happening at once.
There is exactly one thing happening here: corporations usurping control of our devices to protect their interests and profits. The means by which they do so are far less important, they are merely details.
These details are irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. It's all about control, about giving you less of it, the minimum amount of it. The exact mechanism by which they do it is irrelevant.
It's always some abstraction, some indirection, a little bit of clever cryptography. Maybe there's an even more privileged hidden OS running on the CPU which can access everything while we can't. Maybe there's some signed firmware running in a completely separate computer in the hardware and that computer acts as a middleman and gatekeeper. It doesn't matter. Our goal should be to take over the functions those components are doing, whatever it is that they do. They should be running our code, doing our bidding.
> Conflating them only serves to
confuse the discussion and leads people to (wrongly) believe that there's no need to worry about those weirdos ranting and raving in the corner.
What else is new? Stallman has been warning everyone about exactly this for nearly half a century already and people still treat him like some lunatic religious zealot despite the cyberpunk reality we live in today. Even I made that mistake at some point in my life.
If they won't listen, they'll suffer the consequences. They'll end up living under the control of corporations. Might as well remove the word "hacker" from this website's name because everything it ever stood for is over.
In my opinion, Stallman's mistake is he's way too nice about it. Always speaking softly and being reasonable about everything. Always getting bogged down over precise wording and irrelevant details. GNU has an entire glossary page dedicated to precise wording.
Meanwhile, the entire industry has worked around his ideas by isolating his free software and maintaining control with firmware. To have a truly "freedom respecting" computer with no firmware blobs, you gotta get one from literally decades ago. Because these days everything has firmware which you do not control. If you're lucky. If you aren't, you get something that's literally locked down to the point you have no choice whatsoever. What good is free software if you can't run it? It's worthless. It's worse than worthless: one day you wake up and you realize you were working for free for the corporations who are now profiting off of you while denying you the control you wanted.
It's all very simple. Free computers are subversive weapons. They have the power to literally wipe out entire sections of the economy. They have the power to defeat judges, armies, nations. They are quite literally the most important invention of mankind.
Naturally, corporations and governments will do everything in their power to control what you can do with a computer. First, they reduced computers to toys which could run all programs, except the ones they didn't like. This sort of "computer" is what we are discussing right now. Computers where you can do everything except copy their precious content. They are currently in the process of reducing computers to toys which refuse to run all programs, except the ones they like. That's the mobile landscape. Does it matter that hardware remote attestation is the mechanism by which they're doing it? Not much.
I can barely find the words to describe how disgusted this status quo makes me feel. I know what they're doing and I know they're succeeding. It makes me sick. Like I'm witnessing something great be destroyed due to greed and fear. I feel sick.
If that makes me the weird fellow raving in the corner, so be it. I'll keep raving in every thread about the subject until the day I get banned by dang. There's no point to this site if they win anyway. What good is Hacker News if you can't hack?
Yes, firmware has continuously become more complex. Yes, if you go back far enough (quite a long ways) there wasn't any.
Peripherals have always been a black box that increased in complexity over time. That increase in complexity does not imply a decrease in management complexity on the part of the kernel. Far from it! Modern device drivers are far from simple.
> They're not our devices anymore. They're intel's, nvidia's.
This is arguably true, but it is also a rather separate topic of discussion.
> They dictate how we use them.
That's largely only in theory. Now if you had said that Apple or Samsung were dictating how we use our phones I would have been inclined to agree. But I don't think gating certain features in the CPU or GPU for the purpose of market segmentation qualifies as dictating how I use my device. I don't like the practice, but I can't deny that I am able to use the APIs provided by the device in an arbitrary manner without it phoning home to the manufacturer or otherwise authorizing the specifics of their use.
> But the OS is not the one sending those signals.
Depending on how you define "sending those signals" and where you consider the boundary between sender and receiver to be you could reasonably argue that the OS never did that to begin with, or alternatively that it has always done so and still does. It's really quite arbitrary and depends entirely on where you consider the boundary of the device to lie.
I purchase a peripheral. It is a black box that implements some device or manufacturer specific API. The kernel has a device driver that abstracts over this and provides a generic userspace API that will (hopefully) remain relatively stable for multiple decades. That's the extent of the contract and that hasn't changed at all.
The device driver situation is already nearly unmanageable. Imagine how much worse it would be if the kernel needed to manage every last minute hardware detail down to the model and even sub-model variants. For example, for every USB mouse and keyboard, past and present. And that's before we even consider things like the firmware for the USB controller on the mouse, which in all likelihood is its own modularized unit from an entirely different manufacturer. But we're going to need to account for every last detail of that ourselves if we fully commit to the "all opaque firmware bad" route. After all, for the kernel to "truly" be in control of the hardware I suppose it will need to manually manage every last pin that falls under software control.
Technical accuracy and nuance is really quite important here. There are many different nefarious things happening at once. Conflating them only serves to confuse the discussion and leads people to (wrongly) believe that there's no need to worry about those weirdos ranting and raving in the corner.