Marco d'Itri wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > >>I have just packaged a driver for wifi cards. The driver is licensed >>under GPL, but the cards needs a non-free firmware to be uploaded in >>order to work. > > I will quote from policy 2.2.2: > > Examples of packages which would be included in _contrib_ or > _non-US/contrib_ are: > * free packages which require _contrib_, _non-free_ packages or > packages which are not in our archive at all for compilation or > execution, and > * wrapper packages or other sorts of free accessories for non-free > programs. > > Your driver can be compiled and successfully executed without the > firmware,
But does it do anything useful when executed?... > so it should go in main because it's free software. As you > correctly stated, the card needs a firmware, not the device driver. > The hardware device may not perform useful work until its firmware has > been loaded, but we distribute the driver and not the device. Right, but can the driver do anything useful? Actually, I'm inclined to be very broad-minded on that point. If the driver, for instance, can load arbitrary microcode to the hardware at run-time, then it certainly does something useful. (It allows firmware loading and allows the testing of open-source firmware alternatives, at the very least.) > A similar issue was raised for clients for proprietary instant messaging > protocols like AIM and MSN: long ago it was decided that as long as they > are DFSG-free they can be part of Debian, even if they are obviously > useless without the proprietary servers they connect to. Interesting. Do alternative servers exist for these protocols? > Considering that every complex device needs a firmware to work (of which > usually we lack the source code), I cannot see why it should be > relevant for our policy or detrimental to the cause of free software if > this firmware is distributed by the hardware producer on a CD or in a > flash EEPROM. -- This space intentionally left blank.
