Bug#517627: Alteon NIC firmware

[Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>]

Hi Ben,

Ben Hutchings wrote:

> I can't see any licence text within the source tarball.
[...]
> Where is the full version of the licence text that you are summarising?

It turns out we are in a funny situation, since the source code was
downloaded under terms that permit relicensing the _binaries_ with
fairly permissive terms.

To quote the source code license[1]:

	You may license the object code of an Authorized Driver,
	including the Software contained therein; provided that such
	Authorized Driver is restricted to use solely with ALTEON
	ACEnic adapters and ALTEON network cards.

I suspect this means that someone who downloaded the source code from
Alteon (like Jamie Lokier or Bill Paul) can simply _make something up_
as long as it includes the restrictions Alteon suggests.  Weird, but
I kind of like it.

To move forward:

 1. Does that look correct to you?
 2. What license terms would you like?  How can we help to get this
    object code into the linux-firmware repository?

Thanks a lot for your help,
Jonathan

[1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?msg=66;bug=517627