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Re: Solving the linux-2.6 firmware issue



Hello,

On Sat, Jan 06, 2007 at 10:43:27AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> So keyspan USB devices will be useless with Debian kernels in the very
> near future, since there is no alternative to the kernel driver?

The keyspan drivers where already disabled since years.
To be precise, since when the firmware discussion appeared the first time 
before the release of Sarge, so nothing really changed here (the firmwares 
just where in the 2.6.18 tarball for a couple of months now, after the 
kernel-team uploaded an unpruned tarball).

Check the license of the firmwares in a vanilla kernel, and if you want
to suffer some severe pain, just search in an lkml archive for the ancient 
discussion on this topic.


Now, removing all these drivers is a workaround so we can release ASAP.

The real solution needs to be addressed after the release, as was
already stated in the discussion prior to the GR:

- have vendors re-release the drivers including the complete source of 
  the firmwares under a DFSG compatible license or

- patch the drivers to use request_firmware(), and have vendors relicense
  the firmwares so we can at least ship the drivers in the modules-nonfree 
  package

These should be the priorities, too. It is preferable to have a
completely free driver including firmware source and build tool-chain
inside the kernel tree, like the aic7xxx driver for example. 

Best regards
Frederik Schueler

-- 
ENOSIG

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