Re: New position statement on firmware

[maximilian attems <max@stro.at>]

On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 07:21:02PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 11:31 -0600, dann frazier wrote:
> [...]
> > > It is the intention of the kernel team to:
> > 
> > This sounds more like a "plan" instead of a position statement. imo, a
> > position statement should be more along the lines of what we will
> > permit and what we won't, as opposed to what we are currently planning
> > to work on.
> 
> That's true, but the original had this too.  Let's change the title to
> "Kernel team plan for handling sourceless firmware".
> 
> [...]
> > > d. Disable affected drivers in category 1, and in category 2 where
> > >    relicensing is impossible
> > 
> > This is the one part where I have a different view - I don't see any
> > problem with enabling these drivers and adding request_firmware
> > support.
> 
> I don't think our views differ significantly.
> 
> > We can't redistribute them, but users are free to way their
> > own legal risks and install these files from other sources. And to me,
> > that's no reason to force them to compile their own kernel.
> > 
> > Of course, I'm not saying that we should consider that work a
> > priority but, if provided with a patch (or one is inherited from
> > upstream), I don't see why we should reject it.
> 
> I agree there's no reason to reject patches.  In cases where a driver
> depends on non-free firmware and cannot load it from a separate file at
> run-time then we disable it.  It makes sense to prioritise any work we
> do based largely on popularity of the hardware and availability of the
> firmware to our users.  I compressed that into the sloppy wording in (d)
> above.
> 
> I agree with all your other proposed clarifications.
> 
> Ben.

yep, me too.
thanks for decrufting that old statement.

-- 
maks