Re: RFC: Firmware removal
first of all thanks for your work on the relicensing front,
know that it is no fun..
On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 02:19:36AM +0000, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> I wrote:
> > No word from Sun re Cassini.
>
> Still no word, I've tried contacting Simon Phipps now.
>
> > There is a FreeBSD driver for the Kawasaki USB network chips (kaweth
> > driver) under 4-clause BSD but the stated copyright holder for the
> > firmware is the driver author, which is not correct. I will try
> > contacting him.
>
> Bill Paul wrote:
> > First, look here:
> >
> > http://www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/KLSI
> >
> > These are all of the files that I originally received from Kawasaki LSI
> > when I first contacted them about writing a driver, as I originally
> > received them. This includes the file containing the firmwre image. I
> > was never given any firmware source. You will note that there are no
> > copyright headers at all, and when I spoke to the Kawasaki representative
> > on the phone the subject of copyright on the firmware image never came up.
>
> I wrote:
> > No news from Tehuti, but I found firmware in OpenBSD under 4-clause BSD.
>
> Pinchas Ziv (CEO of Tehuti) wrote:
> > We are satisfied with the last statement:
> >
> > " Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware data
> > in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright notice is
> > accompanying it."
>
> I wrote:
> > WhiteHEAT hardware is still avalable so there may be some mileage in
> > contacting the manufacturer.
>
> I talked back and forth with them and they seemed to be happy to fix the
> license text but I never got a final statement of what exactly it would
> be.
>
> I think we should move ahead with removal of sourceless firmware, but
> include everything we have clear permission to distribute in the
> non-free section. This would exclude the 3 blobs mentioned above and
> several others that are already stripped from Debian kernels.
ack.
> I propose that future versions of firmware-nonfree, or a second firmware
> "source" package, should be based on the firmware directory of Linux
> releases, using a script to exclude the files with unclear license
> status. The contents of the firmware directory should be excluded from
> the linux-2.6 package except where source is available.
wouldn't vote for yet another package,
can we integrate them in firmware-nonfree?
> Of the 13 sourceless firmware blobs I was aware of in the lenny kernel,
> several have subsequently been moved to the firmware directory:
>
> - 2.6.27: dabusb, dsp56k (with source), kaweth, whiteheat
> - 2.6.28: cassini
> - 2.6.29: e100, starfire
> - linux-next: qla1280
right.
> The remaining firmware - found in mga, r128, radeon, tehuti, typhoon -
> is at least clearly redistributable.
hmm bnx2 and bnx2x seem still not yet using request_firmware(),
waldi should fire off that patch upstream.
--
maks
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