On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:03:07 -0500 "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <b...@iguanasuicide.net> wrote:
> On Monday 26 April 2010 16:34:36 Celejar wrote: > > On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:16:32 -0500 > > "Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <b...@iguanasuicide.net> wrote: > > > On Monday 26 April 2010 15:09:57 Celejar wrote: > > > > What makes the non-free firmware question particularly interesting is > > > > that the alternative is often to hardcode the functionality into the > > > > hardware. Now, if you had a board with completely closed HW, but that > > > > presented an open, well documented interface for the driver, most > > > > people would be very happy (although there are, of course, the open > > > > hardware crusaders - more power to them!). So, now that they've simply > > > > implemented some of that functionality in SW, in the form of firmware > > > > which the driver installs on the card, but which has nothing to do with > > > > your host machine, are you really any worse off? > > > > > > As a distributor you may very well be. If you can't provide the source > > > code, you can't satisfy the terms of the GPL (usually). > > > > ? We're talking about firmware for things like wireless cards, produced > > by the HW manufacturers, e.g., Broadcom. Where does the GPL enter into > > this? > > Some are included in the tarball provided by the Linux kernel team, which is > distributed under the GPLv2. In particular, I am thinking of the iwl3945 > firmware that is required to run my wireless card. > > It doesn't matter what upstream wants to call source code. The GPL(v2) > defines it as the preferred form for making modifications. (GPLv2, section > 3.) It is unlikely that the firmware was written in a hex editor (or > equivalent). Most likely it is C source for a freestanding (non-hosted) > environment with some manufacturer-specific libraries, but it could also be > in > some manufacturer-specific assembly code. Either form would be better for > making modifications than a binary blob. This is all very well, but the context of this subthread is James's statement that he avoids installing the non-free firmware that his HW requires out of a commitment to FLOSS ideals, to which I responded that I'm not sure if one is really worse off installing such firmware, or using a card that just has that logic built in to its non-free HW. Celejar -- foffl.sourceforge.net - Feeds OFFLine, an offline RSS/Atom aggregator mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100426212714.877e21f0.cele...@gmail.com
