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Re: [LUG] Binary firmware licences

 

Neil Williams wrote:

> It is certainly possible to handle binary files in Debian - look at nvidia - 
> it just can't go into main. Your code would go into contrib and the binaries 
> would go into non-free.
> 
> My question is:
> 
> If this is a required update to the existing firmware, isn't the firmware 
> binary actually merely data? What you need is a free software method of 
> installing the firmware update, not the source to the firmware itself.
> 
> Let me have some more details and I'll raise it on a debian mailing list.
> 

Hi Neil,

The main code we are doing is 100% GPL and will go in the kernel, things
 have already started moving up stream with kernel developers so things
are happening there.

What we have is that we support different devices, some are "simple"
devices, ie you can do eveything with simple PCI register access, some
newer ones are more advanced and have some kind of MCU on board and
require firmware to operate. The device is volatile so the firmware
needs loading every time. The code that will load the firmware is 100%
GPL, in fact it uses the kernels firmware loader system anyway.


So basicly we have a dependence on some binary data, now this could go
into non-free no problem . I think we can get a free to distribute type
licence (on the binary data) so copying will not be a problem. My basic
objective is to get this compatable with as many distros as possible as
the main code will be in the kernel in the future this just leaves the
binary firmware module to distribute seperatley. We currently don't have
any userspace code that is required to use the driver.

Regards

Robin

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