Re: non-free firmware
On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:58:16PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 09:50:47PM +0100, Frederik Schueler wrote:
> > Hallo,
> >
> > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 11:10:46AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jan 08, 2006 at 10:04:45AM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> > > > Now, my question is: Is there still work open? If so, what? Or is the
> > > > current removal of firmware enough, and we can relax on this topic?
> >
> > From my point of view, the situation currently looks like this:
> >
> > 1. tg3 and qla2xxx driver status has been solved: upstream has
> > relicensed the drivers - the sourcecode is licensed under the GPL, the
> > firmware data is freely distributable as an aggregate work.
>
> The firmware is still source-less, and it is not data, as it represents
> microcode destined to be run on the controller it is uploaded to.
we all agree that a line needs to be drawn.
The stripped firmwares have questionable licenses
and needs to be put in non-free.
kernel.org is distributing all of them.
i'm sure that a user expects a package called linux-image to contain
tg3 for example.
in an ideal world the line could be drawn much tighter,
at the moment there is not much of a gain.
--
maks
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