Bug#498631: binary firmware in drivers/net/cassini.h

[Robert Millan <rmh@aybabtu.com>]

Package: linux-2.6
Version: 2.6.26-5
Severity: serious

Hi,

drivers/net/cassini.h (licensed under GPLv2+) contains two chunks of
binary firmware, such as:

/* firmware patch for NS_DP83065 */
typedef struct cas_saturn_patch {
        u16 addr;
        u16 val;
} cas_saturn_patch_t;

#if 1
cas_saturn_patch_t cas_saturn_patch[] = {
{0x8200,    0x007e}, {0x8201,    0x0082}, {0x8202,    0x0009},
[...]

Each of them amounts to 2254 bytes, and there's no corresponding source code.

It's worth noting that the second chunk is #ifdef'ed out and not actually
used for anything.

Since this file is licensed under GPL, this could make it illegal to
redistribute it.

In either case, the presence of source-less binary code is a violation
of DFSG #2 requirement for source code availability.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-6-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ca_AD.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ca_AD.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash