On Monday 27 February 2006 9:49 pm, Steve Langasek wrote: > > Is the firmware binary just data? (Like an image?) > > What is the aim of this particular question? Under GR 2004-003, all > contents of main must be free according to the DFSG, including images and > other data; so if you're asking if it's ok to include a non-free binary > blob in main that we don't have the right to modify, the answer is no. Thanks. As the firmware isn't going to run on the host system I was confused about whether it counted as software. I've got it now - content matters, not what that content actually does or where it is run. As you mention, images in a GPL package are modifiable, they just need a suitable editor. This firmware is not modifiable. > > Should the package be split so that the package containing the driver for > > the unaffected devices can go into main? > > Yes, a package split sounds like it's needed. Note that this means > splitting the source package, since you can't build binaries for both main > and non-free from the same source. The driver itself sounds like it's > perfectly suitable for main, only the optional firmware would need to be in > non-free. The driver itself is further broken down into device-specific modules so there's no point in distributing in Debian main those modules that will not function without the firmware. I've recommended upstream to split those modules into a separate source package that can be clearly identified as non-free and can contain the binary firmware. This then should give us two packages, each one specifying exactly which devices it can support. One without the firmware in main, one with the firmware and those modules that depend on it, in non-free. (I suppose we could have those modules in contrib but that makes a third package.) -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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