Re: broadcom proposed firmware licence, please comment ...
On Tue, May 31, 2005 at 11:24:12AM -0400, Andres Salomon wrote:
> On Sun, 29 May 2005 05:48:55 -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> [...]
> > Great! This license is totally distributable. I'm not sure, unfortunately,
> > what counts as "equivalent" to hexadecimal. I think that's the only problem.
> > If it was just "permission to distribute, unmodified, in any form", it would
> > be clear.
> >
> > Before you move the whole driver to non-free, you should know that I have made
> > a version of the driver which loads the firmware from files if it is
> > available (many tg3 users don't *need* the firmware), and I believe that is
> > the one currently in Debian's kernel tree. I have also designed a package
> > containing appropriate firmware files for this version of the driver. The
> > only reason I have not published the package yet is that it was under this
> > legal cloud.
>
> As I remember, upstream (jgarzik/davem) was not overly interested in such
> a patch to tg3. Is this still the case, or are they amenable to such
> changes? I'd rather not maintain a tg3 patch again, if possible.
In the LKML thread they complained that nobody actually provided code, and
that we where just brassing wind or whatever they say. So if there is such a
patch, it should be proposed, together with a patch that rectifies the
firmware licence, and they will hardly be able to reject it, or at least
provide technical reasons why they do, which we can then fix.
We need to provide a reply to broadcom soon too, preferably this week. I am
overbusy this week though :/
Friendly,
Sven Luther
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