This doesn't solve a _problem_. Oh, and there are plenty of binary patches you can find around the web that do such things. They typically void your warranty *for a good reason* though.
We don't really care about that, though, right :) Installing LinuxBIOS voids the board vendor's warranty too, I'm sure.
Of course. Note the "*for a good reason*" though.
It would be nice to have, yes, but I think right now we have much bigger problems to solve first.
Sure. This whole thread is pretty hypothetical.
Ah good :-)
Basically, having Free firmware for things like hard drives could allow some amazing innovation.
...and will lead to *lots* of bricked drives ;-)
Maybe video cards or network cards would be a better example here. But, yes.
Most video cards already *are* programmed by (free) software. Maybe not very well, but that's due to lack of specs.
Many (high-end and wireless) network cards can get the same treatment, we just need more datasheets ;-)
I'm not convinced you can really; esp. not legally. But yeah, that "geek factor" would make me want to do it, sure -- except I see a HDD as 100% a black box with no internals that I care about (or want to care about). I also don't feel like reprogramming the ucode on CPUs, or even the ucode on a flash chip's internal controller, etc.
But your network interface? Video card?
Yeah. Those devices directly access main memory so there's fun stuff to do with their embedded CPUs :-)
Segher