Re: problem with SATA disk, difference between standard kernel and Debian kernel
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 16:21:26 -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 12/10/08 16:10, Celejar wrote:
>> On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 16:05:26 -0600 "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." wrote:
[...]
>>> The Debian kernel has some non-free (as in: source not available)
>>> parts removed. There are also Debian-specific patches added.
>>
>> The vanilla kernel has non-free stuff in it? I thought it's all GPL.
>
> Some drivers have firmware blobs encoded in them as really long byte
> arrays. They are de jure GPL, but, practically, are closed source.
Some of these blobs seem to have quite serious license problems, e.g.:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10750
AFAICT, upstream might eventually have to remove such blobs as well, or
at least try harder to make sure that they were indeed licensed by the
copyright holder for distribution in the kernel. It seems reasonable to
me that Debian tries to be extra careful in these cases, keeping in mind
the "100% free" guarantee in the social contract.
--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |
Reply to: