is that the purists will not accept a driver that isn't 100% Open
Source. Since the firmware and Globespan proprietary routines are in
a library they will probably tell you to go away. If not let me know.
Is it truly the case that you will tell them to go away? and if so do
<snip>
IMHO only if they do like Intel did. You can take a look at
/etc/firmware and check that those are binary-only firmwares, but have
free distribution rights granted to OpenBSD and others.
Firmware for downloading onto a card is one matter, and could be placed
in /etc/firmware given a free-redistribution license.
Vendor-supplied binary-only code that runs as part of the kernel
('Globespan proprietary routines'), that's something quite different...
If a firmware is mandatory, one can have a free-well-written driver
and plug in on it a bad licensed firmware, but that will not make
anything better, think again about what Intel did and tell this story
to the Traverse guys.
Traverse sell cards, Globespan make the chipsets and those parts of the
software that you aren't allowed to examine. They're the people you'd
need to ask to free up the code.
