I would be nice if pressure could be put on IBM to "walk the walk".
Peace, Love and Linux? yeah right. IBM needs to release these as source... I don't know what would need to happen to convince them that this would be a good thing. I suspect most of the community doesn't know that IBM has these closed drivers. Perhaps someone could write an insightful article about it and post it online somewhere for the LinuxToday/Slashdot/Newsforge types to pick up. -----Original Message----- From: Jochen Röhrig [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 12:42 PM To: debian-security@lists.debian.org Cc: debian-s390@lists.debian.org Subject: Questions concerning S/390 OCO-modules Hi, I would like to package three network device drivers for IBM S/390 (see ITPs #108709, #108710, #108711). The device drivers are provided by IBM as OCO (object code only) modules (i.e. there are no sources available) and they are released under a special IBM "International License Agreement for Non-Warranted Programs" (to see the license agreement click on one of the "{lcs,qdio,qeth}-2.4.5-s390-2.tar.gz" hyperlinks on http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/linux390/download_obj. html+). This raises a few questions: - Does the license allow distribution of the oco-drivers with Debian? From item 1. of the license agreement I derive that this is possible as long as a) Debian assures that the license agreement is distributed with the oco-driver and b) that the user explicitely agrees with the terms of the license (actually the user can not download the oco-drivers from the IBM web site without explicitely accepting the agreement). I think a) is definitely not a problem and b) could be realized by asking the user before installing the oco-driver whether (s)he agrees with the license (could probably be done in the preinstall-script?). - Are there any pitfalls in the license agreement I may have overseen? - Can the oco-drivers go into non-free? Since there is no source code available, the oco-drivers are not DFSG compliant and therefore could not go into "main" or "contrib". So, from the Debian POV, is it acceptable to put them into non-free? Citing from a footnote in the Debian Policy Manual (version 3.5.5.0, 2001-06-01, section "2.1.4 The non-free section"): "It is possible that there are policy requirements which the package is unable to meet, for example, if the source is unavailable. These situations will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis." Who finally decides whether such a package can go into non-free? What would be the alternative, if the package could not go into non-free (i.e. not be part of the distribution at all)? Since the oco-drivers are needed on S/390 to establish direct external network connections they play an essential role in making Debian usable on S/390. If we could not integrate them into the distribution, this would be a major problem. We could, e.g., not provide an official Debian install-ramdisk (that would have to go into non-free as well) that supports installation via one of the devices driven by the oco-drivers... Awaiting your comments! Jochen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
