On Sat, Apr 09, 2005 at 01:13:57PM -0400, Andres Salomon wrote: > On Thu, 07 Apr 2005 01:11:38 +0200, Peter 'p2' De Schrijver wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > Reading http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/12/msg00078.html I > > wondered if people would be willing to work on a free firmware for the > > Tigon II chip. I didn't look at the existing code yet, but looking at the > > datasheet > > (http://alteon.shareable.org/firmware-source/12.4.13/tigonbk.pdf.bz2) it > > doesn't seem to be a very complicated chip to code for. I'm not sure > > however, how to handle the development in such a way the resulting > > firmware can be released under a free license without any legal risks. I > > have 2 PCI boards with the Tigon II chip and a 1000BaseSX PHY. I also have > > an Ace Director III loadbalancer which consist of 10 Tigon II chips. 8 of > > those are used for 100BaseT interfaces, 1 has a 1000BaseSX PHY and the > > 10th is used as a system controller. > > > > I can't imagine there would be any issues if you released both the source > and binary, and licensed them under the GPL. The firmware source and > binary can both be distributed in the kernel (with the binary actually in > the driver source code). > Sure. That's ok. I was more thinking of someone reading the existing firmware sources, writing a spec and a second person/group implementing the new free firmware based on the spec. AFAICS the implementors and the spec writers should be different people/groups. Or do you think it would be ok if the same people read the existing non-free sources and reimplement its functionality in a new free firmware ? Thanks, Peter (p2).
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