Andrew Pollock wrote:
On Wed, Nov 03, 2004 at 10:30:10PM +0000, Martin Michlmayr - Debian Project Leader wrote:http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/4118Kudos to Theo for OpenBSD getting out and poking the vendors. My concern is that for all their effort, and potential flow on benefits to Linux, it won't be considered good enough for Debian because of the current stance on firmware, and source code to it... Where did we get up to with that anyway, binary blobs are out, end of story?
Currently the license of the acx100 firmware doesn't even allow to redistribute the firmware. I hope with this action Texas Instrument would at least give the right to redistribute it, so it could be included in non-free.
For user having non-free in their /etc/apt/source.list, that would let them install the driver (which is licensed under GPL and already in Debian, section contrib) in one operation using apt-get.
Currently they have to find the firmware on the CD given with the card, which is not very easy. Sometimes it is located in a .cab file, or in a .exe installer.
A free firmware is better than a non-free firmware. But a non-free firmware is better than nothing.
-- .''`. Aurelien Jarno GPG: 1024D/F1BCDB73 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux developer | Electrical Engineer `. `' aurel32@debian.org | aurelien@aurel32.net `- people.debian.org/~aurel32 | www.aurel32.net