Re: Bug#239952: kernel-source-2.6.4: qla2xxx contains non-freefirmware

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net> wrote:
> Scripsit Henning Makholm <henning@makholm.net>
> 
> > It ought not to be difficult (neither in a technical or in a
> > economic/legal sense) for manufacturers to ship the standard firmware
> > as a separate file on the driver CD that usually accompanies such
> > hardware, and for the authors of free drivers to make the kernel look
> > for the firmware on the file system when the device is first accessed.
> > The driver could log an appropriate message during boot-up which
> > some appropriate package could inspect (during installation, or even
> > at each boot if so configured) and ask the user to insert the vendor's
> > driver CD in order to copy firmware from it.
> 
> A side question: Does -legal think that it would be OK for Debian to
> distribute *checksums* of the non-free magic blob-of-bits, such that
> it can be located inside a Windows driver on a disk without needing to
> know its exact position?

A SHA1 checksum is 160 bits or 20 bytes.  This sentence is longer than
that.  I would say that it isn't copyrightable, as well as being
allowed by fair use (where applicable).

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu