On Mon, 2009-04-13 at 11:31 -0600, dann frazier wrote: [...] > > It is the intention of the kernel team to: > > This sounds more like a "plan" instead of a position statement. imo, a > position statement should be more along the lines of what we will > permit and what we won't, as opposed to what we are currently planning > to work on.
That's true, but the original had this too. Let's change the title to "Kernel team plan for handling sourceless firmware". [...] > > d. Disable affected drivers in category 1, and in category 2 where > > relicensing is impossible > > This is the one part where I have a different view - I don't see any > problem with enabling these drivers and adding request_firmware > support. I don't think our views differ significantly. > We can't redistribute them, but users are free to way their > own legal risks and install these files from other sources. And to me, > that's no reason to force them to compile their own kernel. > > Of course, I'm not saying that we should consider that work a > priority but, if provided with a patch (or one is inherited from > upstream), I don't see why we should reject it. I agree there's no reason to reject patches. In cases where a driver depends on non-free firmware and cannot load it from a separate file at run-time then we disable it. It makes sense to prioritise any work we do based largely on popularity of the hardware and availability of the firmware to our users. I compressed that into the sloppy wording in (d) above. I agree with all your other proposed clarifications. Ben.
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