Re: [YET-ANOTHER-AMENDMENT]: Release Etch now, with source-less but legal and freely licensed firmware
On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 07:58:00PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 02:09:50PM +0200, Frank Küster wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> Let's propose the following ammendment to your ammendment, or rather propose a
> new point 4.
>
> 4. We give priority to the timely release of Etch over sorting every bit out;
> for this reason, we will treat removal of problematic firmware as a
> best-effort process, and deliver firmware in debian kernel packages as well
> as installation packages (.udebs), as part of Debian Etch.
> We allow inclusion into etch, even if the license does not normally allow
> modification, as long as we are legally allowed to distribute them.
> We further note that some of these firmware do not have proper license,
> and as thus fall implicitly under the generic linux kernel GPL license.
> The sourceless nature of these firmwares make them de-facto
> non-distributable. Still, we extend the benefit of the doubt to those
> hardware vendors, who probably did not understand the implication of not
> adding a proper license for those firmwares, and will include them in
> Debian etch. We will work with those firmware vendors post-etch, to
> provide proper sources for those firmwares, to clarify their licenses, or
> to provide a statement that those are not actually programs, but plain
> register dumps.
Manoj suggested i split this clause in subclauses. I have added a complete
version of the clauses to the kernelfirmware wiki page :
http://wiki.debian.org/KernelFirmwareLicensing
Which would probably be an easier way to handle this, and work on a definitive
solution.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
Reply to: