Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>]

On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 11:28:07AM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> I think they will be accepted if they first introduce a transition
> period where tg3 will do request_firmware() and only use the built-in
> firmware if that fails.

Fine with me.

> Second step is to make the built-in firmware a
> config option and then later on when the infrastructure matures for
> firmware loading/providing firmware it can be removed from the driver
> entirely.

I think the infrasturcture is quite mature.  We have a lot of drivers
that require it to function.

> One of the sticking points will be how people get the firmware; I can
> see the point of a kernel-distributable-firmware project related to the
> kernel (say on kernel.org) which would provide a nice collection of
> distributable firmwares (and is appropriately licensed). Without such
> joint infrastructure things will always be a mess and in that context I
> can see the point of the driver authors not immediately wanting to
> switch exclusively. Simply because they'll get swamped with email about
> how the driver doesn't work...

I agree.  And that really doesn't need a lot of infrastructure,
basically just a tarball that unpacks to /lib/firmware, maybe a specfile
and debian/ dir in addition.