If it is a choice between preparing my sd cards with open partitioning tools, or running some non-auditable official tool in binary form, it is an easy choice.
I'll do the former, as I always have.
By the way, a cool quote from the agreement preceding the download page:
>3. RESTRICTIONS: You agree to NOT: (a) disassemble, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive any source code for the SDA Software from executable code;
This should be quite alarming. They insist that we format SD cards with their tool, but they don't want us to know what the tool does.
I will not be the one reversing them, but I checked it is possible to download these through tor, and recommend downloading them that way to prevent potential trouble.
> 3. RESTRICTIONS: You agree to NOT: (a) disassemble, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to derive any source code for the SDA Software from executable code;
Depending on where you live, this might have no legal effect. Some jurisdictions allow explicitly for reverse engineering & co. for different purposes (e.g. research, interoperability with other systems, etc.).
Some manufacturers have proprietary undocumented APIs that allow the host to upgrade the firmware in the card, but I’m not sure every maker does, and very sure most wouldn’t bother to update their firmware unless some horrendous issue came up.
