<story><title>Firmware is on shaky ground – let&apos;s see what it&apos;s made of</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/opinion_column/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmyswimmy</author><text>As an EE I love the idea of open firmware. I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics inside. It would let me truly understand and modify the items that I purchased.&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a cost to it to the companies, which I fully expect to be passed down to me, but not in the form of a license agreement - in the form of an increase in base price.&lt;p&gt;The problem for companies is multifold. A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that&amp;#x27;s under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. They&amp;#x27;re also going to worry about IP; certainly I build products that lean on the work from previous projects. I would kind of hate handing that over to potential competitors. But some of that &amp;#x27;hate&amp;#x27; depends on the fact that my competitors don&amp;#x27;t give their firmware code out either. Maybe I would love it if I could see how they implement things. Maybe it would push us all to deliver better things. Another impact - open firmware would definitely change sales models for equipment.&lt;p&gt;I imagine that if I had to start delivering open firmware for designs, I&amp;#x27;d need to push some of the software control over product limitations into hardware. That might cost more, but is better anyway. Usually. And I&amp;#x27;d try hard to figure out a way to install a &amp;#x27;unverified firmware&amp;#x27; hardware flag, maybe an efuse blown in a hard-to-replace component, so that we could know who broke things.&lt;p&gt;But I do like the idea. I want the firmware for my ${everything}.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thomastjeffery</author><text>What cost?&lt;p&gt;Competition? That isn&amp;#x27;t definite.&lt;p&gt;Support overhead? I don&amp;#x27;t buy it.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that&amp;#x27;s under warranty, companies are going to be concerned.&lt;p&gt;...so void the warrantee when flashing 3rd-party firmware.&lt;p&gt;How often, &lt;i&gt;in reality&lt;/i&gt;, are people going to fry their hardware? It&amp;#x27;s not as if 99.99999% of 3rd-party firmware users are &lt;i&gt;writing that firmware themselves&lt;/i&gt;! Hardware damage should be expected as an extreme edge case, not a broad looming risk.&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;If we are going to put this much effort into speculating cost, we should put equal effort into speculating &lt;i&gt;value&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Open firmware is significantly likely to reduce the costs of compatibility and edge-case support. It is also likely to increase the value of the product by making it auditable and maintainable. It also factors out the cost of anti-user-maintenance efforts like DRM.&lt;p&gt;Most importantly, open firmware can &lt;i&gt;stabilize&lt;/i&gt; the value of a product, increasing its resale price and delaying price decline. Unfortunately, this is the point that many companies consider &lt;i&gt;negative&lt;/i&gt;, because they don&amp;#x27;t want to compete with themselves.</text></comment>
<story><title>Firmware is on shaky ground – let&apos;s see what it&apos;s made of</title><url>https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/17/opinion_column/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmyswimmy</author><text>As an EE I love the idea of open firmware. I wish more companies would provide it - akin to the old TVs and other equipment that came with [full!] schematics inside. It would let me truly understand and modify the items that I purchased.&lt;p&gt;There is definitely a cost to it to the companies, which I fully expect to be passed down to me, but not in the form of a license agreement - in the form of an increase in base price.&lt;p&gt;The problem for companies is multifold. A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that&amp;#x27;s under warranty, companies are going to be concerned. They&amp;#x27;re also going to worry about IP; certainly I build products that lean on the work from previous projects. I would kind of hate handing that over to potential competitors. But some of that &amp;#x27;hate&amp;#x27; depends on the fact that my competitors don&amp;#x27;t give their firmware code out either. Maybe I would love it if I could see how they implement things. Maybe it would push us all to deliver better things. Another impact - open firmware would definitely change sales models for equipment.&lt;p&gt;I imagine that if I had to start delivering open firmware for designs, I&amp;#x27;d need to push some of the software control over product limitations into hardware. That might cost more, but is better anyway. Usually. And I&amp;#x27;d try hard to figure out a way to install a &amp;#x27;unverified firmware&amp;#x27; hardware flag, maybe an efuse blown in a hard-to-replace component, so that we could know who broke things.&lt;p&gt;But I do like the idea. I want the firmware for my ${everything}.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LeifCarrotson</author><text>&amp;gt; A big one is that the firmware is the piece that not only interacts with but also protects the hardware. If you are easily able to change the firmware, you are easily able to destroy the hardware, and if that&amp;#x27;s under warranty, companies are going to be concerned.&lt;p&gt;Is that justifiable, though? I bricked a router some time ago messing around with ddwrt. I thought about soldering on a TTL serial adapter, to recover it, but didn&amp;#x27;t end up getting around to it, but never in my wildest dreams did I think of asking Netgear to replace the 8-year-old product I broke through my actions. I do know at least one person who is reckless with &amp;quot;no questions asked&amp;quot; warranties, and would ask for a refund with a straight face after trying to use a router to reduce spaghetti sauce spattering when he microwaved his dinner, but these people can&amp;#x27;t be that common...&lt;p&gt;One area where it does seem slightly more justifiable is FCC-certified radio devices. If the transmitter power level is restricted by law, I&amp;#x27;d prefer that end users&amp;#x2F;modifiers of the firmware be considered legally responsible for the consequences of their own actions, but I understand that pragmatically it&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to ask OEMs to lock down firmware after getting certified in a test lab than to monitor a million end users.</text></comment>