Hi Sven, On Wed, May 25, 2005 at 09:28:23PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > It seems our crusade to solve the dubious licencing of firmware inside the > linux kernel source is starting to show is fruits. After the QLogic feedback > Andres Salomon reported in a previous mail, it is now Broadcom which is coming > back to us with a licence proposal. > Keep in mind that this was done under the assumption that a firmware embedded > in the main kernel is an aggregate work (see mailing list archive for details, > or discuss in a separate thread, CCing me if possible). This means that > altough the firmware in itself remains non-free as far as the DFSG is > concerned, it at least makes the whole file distributible again, which it was > not while the firmware was distributed source-less under the GPL. > The text of the new licence proposal is as follows : > > +/* xxx.h: Broadcom tg3 network driver. > > + * > > + * Copyright (c) 2004, 2005 Broadcom Corporation > > + * > > + * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify > > + * it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by > > + * the Free Software Foundation, except as noted below. > > + * > > + * This file contains firmware data derived from proprietary unpublished > > + * source code, Copyright (c) 2004, 2005 Broadcom Corporation. > > + * > > + * Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware data > > + * in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright notice is > > + * accompanying it. > > + */ > I would have liked a clear identification of the firmware blob, but i guess > that to anyone familiar with C, it is immediately evident what is the firmware > blob and what is normal code. > So, before i reply to them, i would like to have feedback from debian-legal, > and we can then move ahead and upload this driver to the non-free part of our > archive, including a working .udeb. I believe this proposed license gives Debian the permissions necessary to allow distribution of the firmware blob in non-free. Thanks, -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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