firmware is weirder than we give it credit for. It's even hard to say exactly what it is.

That used to be easy – firmware was software built into hardware (don't mention microcode.) In the days when that meant small expensive ROM chips, only a tiny part of a device's working software could be stored that way, in general just the low-level routines that directly operated the hardware and presented APIs to software that would be loaded in later. Now many devices have enough system flash on board to hold the complete stack, firmware now includes complete operating systems and has come to mean that software at the heart of your technology that controls its behavior and which you can't just load in as an app.

This somewhat shadowy status has consequences. For a start, it has virtually no consumer market. Nobody goes out and buys new firmware; //

No illicit market exists to cream off revenues.

While companies can buy in firmware from other companies, more often, as with MSI, you're a hardware company writing your own firmware. //

So there's no market in stolen firmware, and not much to be gained by keeping it secret anyway. So why lock it down? //

So unlocking firmware makes it more secure, not less. It makes devices more useful, not less. It creates more innovation, not less. And open source firmware is theft-proof; nobody can steal what you're giving away. //

In fact, it's probably time to ditch the idea of firmware as a magical chimaera too dangerous to be freed. The idea only made sense when hardware imposed far more limits on computer architecture. Its continued existence doesn't benefit anyone – manufacturers, users, innovators or the environment. As one of the last ways left to lock people out from their own devices, it's a barrier, not a shield. Publish the code. Open the specs. There's no firm foundation for firmware any more.