On 2004-04-14T14:43:14-0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: > Debian-legal has, as usual, taken the most conservative stance, > assuming that things are *not* distributable unless it's clear that > they are. But debian-legal is almost entirely not lawyers. An > opinion from a lawyer who understands the GPL would probably be > accepted by debian-legal over their own opinions. It was determine that drivers with questionable licenses were being distributed as part of the linux source code (what 2-3 years for tg3?). They were subsequently removed from new versions but the drivers remain in old versions. This either leaves end-users standed on old versions or forced to use upstream code. Is this really the rhgt message for end-users? Are there any plans to add these to control or non-free (and why could that not have been done prior to breaking the upgrade path)? Broadcom (and others) probably want their drivers distributed by Debian, so they can sell their products. If the above sounds about right, then perhaps someone representing Debian could contact the relevant vendors to make them aware of the problem and request a resolution that is acceptable to Debian? I am just an end-user, but I will contact 3com to tell them that their nic 3c996 is no longer supported by Debian due to license concerns of the Broadcom (tg3) drivers. /Allan -- Allan Wind P.O. Box 2022 Woburn, MA 01888-0022 USA
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