Bug#412950: linux-2.6: [legal] the current kernel tarball doesn't respect the GR 2006-007
Package: linux-2.6
Severity: serious
Justification: http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007
Well, in http://www.debian.org/vote/2006/vote_007, we voted about the kernel
firmwares, and among others claimed :
3. We assure the community that there will be no regressions in the progress
made for freedom in the kernel distributed by Debian relative to the Sarge
release in Etch
and :
4. ... as long as we are legally allowed to do so, and the firmware is
distributed upstream under a license that complies with the DFSG.
Both of these restrictions are not respected by the current linux-2.6 source
tarball, and the tg3 firmware driver in particular.
The tg3 firmware was stripped from the sarge kernel, it is a non-free but
redistributable binary blob, and this is thus a regression with regard to the
sarge release.
Secondly, the tg3 firmware licence is :
* Firmware is:
* Derived from proprietary unpublished source code,
* Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Broadcom Corporation.
*
* Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware
* data in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright
* notice is accompanying it.
which would never pass the DFSG in any way. The licence clearly state it is a
binary derived from unpublished source code, and neither the source code is
available, nor is there any right of modification involved in it.
It is astounding how, Steve Langasek as the lead RM, specifically asked for
a GR on the subject in order to know how to act as RM, and then, even before
the vote finished, claimed he would not respect it.
Friendly,
Sven Luther
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-3-powerpc
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
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