Francois Romieu recently added new initialisation sequences for RTL8168D
v1 and v2 in the Linux kernel r8169 driver (phy_reg_init_2 in
rtl8168d_1_hw_phy_config and phy_reg_init_1 in
rtl8168d_2_hw_phy_config). I believe these are taken from Realtek's
r8168 driver.
These initialisation sequences appear to modify the firmware on the chip
by copying new machine code into its memory. If this new machine code
is compiled from some other source form (e.g. assembly language or C
code) and the source form is not available then the machine code cannot
be distributed under the GNU GPL as the rest of the driver is.
In the Debian packages of the Linux kernel I have changed the r8169
driver to load this data/code from separate files via the firmware
loader rather than including them directly (and to continue without them
if they are not available). Currently Debian does not distribute the
files at all, but we can distribute them in the 'non-free' section of
the archive if given an appropriate licence.
Please can you let me know:
1. What are these initialisation sequences doing?
2. If they are copying code, is the code compiled from some other source
form?
3. If there is some other source form, can Realtek will give a licence
for redistribution of the code in binary form alone?
An example licence for binary-only redistribution is:
Copyright <date> <company>
Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware
data in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright
notice is accompanying it.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.
- Robert Coveyou
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