Bug#497200: ITP: rt2860-source -- source for RT2860 wireless adapter kernel module

[Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>]

On Sat, 2008-08-30 at 22:08 +0300, Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> Package: wnpp
> Severity: wishlist
> Owner: Damyan Ivanov <dmn@debian.org>
> 
> * Package name    : rt2860-source
>   Version         : 1.7.0.0
>   Upstream Author : Ralink Tech Inc
> * URL             : http://www.ralinktech.com/
> * License         : GPL-2+  some binary non-free firmware
>   Programming Lang: C
>   Description     : source for RT2860 wireless adapter kernel module
> 
> RT2860 is a wireless adapter found particularly in the ASUS EeePC model
> 901 and above. The package contains the source of a Linux kernel module
> for it.

Would you like to include this in the pkg-ralink project on Alioth?

> There may be some licensing problems and this is why I CC debian-legal.
> All the sources are licensed under GPL-2+, except one file,
> include/firmware.h, which is generated from a binary blob and contains
> the following notice:
<snip>
> I did not yet check if this code is actually linked in the GPL-2+
> module, but have a bad feeling it it does. Would a compiled GPL source,
> including firmware.h be even distributable?

Possibly not.  The module source code should go in contrib with the blob
and firmware.h removed.  The blob should go in the firmware-ralink
binary package built from the firmware-nonfree source package.

> Perhaps the module can be changed to load its firmware from external
> file or even not need that nasty firmware.h (there are traces of
> support to other hardware and that firmware may be for them).

This should not be too hard.  Look at rt73 for an example of how
this has been done in an existing Ralink driver.

Ben.