Re: Bug#239952: kernel-source-2.6.4: qla2xxx contains non-free firmware
Chris Cheney wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 07:41:07PM -0600, Chris Cheney wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 12:01:14AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
>> -snip-
>> > Sophistry. It's clearly the form you "preferred" when you were writing
>> > it. The GPL does not require that programs be well-written, it merely
>> > requires a level playing field.
>>
>> So binary firmware is ok as long as it was not the vendor that wrote
>> the driver? Wow isn't that ingenious. :P
>
> Actually a reverse engineered driver with blobs in it is probably
Was it reverse-engineered using a "Chinese Wall" system, under which the
people writing the driver *never saw* the proprietary driver? :-) If so,
you're OK. Otherwise.....
> illegal since it is reproducing copyrighted code, I forgot to mention
> that earlier. :)
Yes, if the blobs are
(1) large and creative enough to be copyrightable
(2) not covered under 'fair use'
> BTW - I know of at least one other driver in the linux kernels like
> that, the one I wrote: kernel/drivers/usb/media/vicam.ko
If you actually extracted those setup4[] bytes from a proprietary binary
driver, then the vicam.c driver is probably completely undistributable,
yes. :-P
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