Bug#999485: Please add brcmfmac43456-sdio.* files as it's not just used in RPi devices
Package: firmware-brcm80211
Followup-For: Bug #999485
X-Debbugs-Cc: gwolf@gwolf.org, didi.debian@cknow.org, 1023741@bugs.debian.org
> The other option is that they get included upstream in
> linux-firmware.git by upstream?
As an update about this: in the past it seems that one of the blockers for
upstreaming was an unclear licensing situation for the firmware. The other,
maybe more important blocker is that it tends to be (as I understand it)
vendors themselves who are expected to offer files to the linux-firmware.git
repo.
There is now a license available for the brcmfmac43456 firmware: it's included
in the relevant RPF package metadata, in the usual copyright file:
https://archive.raspberrypi.org/debian/pool/main/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-nonfree_20221012-1~bpo11+1+rpt1.debian.tar.xz
(since we're talking about non-free firmware, I don't think that there is a
DFSG compatibility concern with packaging this, although the linux-firmware.git
maintainers likely have their own acceptance criteria. even so, if/when we
are creating another package, we should probably distribute the same license
file now that it's available. I can prepare a patch if that'd be helpful,
since I'm risking creating work by mentioning it)
There don't appear to be many Synaptics contributors active on the Linux
kernel mailing lists re: wireless devices.. so I'm not sure what the best way
to approach them to ask about submitting the firmware upstream would be.
RPF have also had inbound requests to upload the firmware, but I don't think
that it's their responsibility (or right) to do that.
And finally a kind of meta-point: I've found the name 'firmware' kinda
confusing while trying to install and correctly configure my RPi. It seems to
me like we're referring to two types of firmware: firmware used by kernel
modules (as in: linux-firmware.git, firmware-brcm80211, brcmfmac, etc), but
also boot-time-firmware required during all the weirdness to get the RPi
system to load a kernel and initrd.
Is there another term for the latter, to disambiguate it when we talk about it
and name packages? Software that's like firmware and used to boot the system?
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