Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261705AbVDEMJp (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 08:09:45 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261706AbVDEMJo (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 08:09:44 -0400 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:28644 "EHLO parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261705AbVDEMJm (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 08:09:42 -0400 Message-ID: <42527FF6.1080502@pobox.com> Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 08:09:26 -0400 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050328 Fedora/1.7.6-1.2.5 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Christoph Hellwig CC: Arjan van de Ven , Ian Campbell , Sven Luther , "Theodore Ts'o" , Greg KH , Michael Poole , debian-legal@lists.debian.org, debian-kernel@lists.debian.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice. References: <20050404182753.GC31055@pegasos> <20050404191745.GB12141@kroah.com> <20050404192945.GB1829@pegasos> <20050404205527.GB8619@thunk.org> <20050404211931.GB3421@pegasos> <1112689164.3086.100.camel@icampbell-debian> <20050405083217.GA22724@pegasos> <1112690965.3086.107.camel@icampbell-debian> <20050405091144.GA18219@lst.de> <1112693287.6275.30.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> <20050405093258.GA18523@lst.de> In-Reply-To: <20050405093258.GA18523@lst.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1707 Lines: 42 Christoph Hellwig wrote: > On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 11:28:07AM +0200, Arjan van de Ven wrote: >>One of the sticking points will be how people get the firmware; I can >>see the point of a kernel-distributable-firmware project related to the >>kernel (say on kernel.org) which would provide a nice collection of >>distributable firmwares (and is appropriately licensed). Without such >>joint infrastructure things will always be a mess and in that context I >>can see the point of the driver authors not immediately wanting to >>switch exclusively. Simply because they'll get swamped with email about >>how the driver doesn't work... > > > I agree. And that really doesn't need a lot of infrastructure, > basically just a tarball that unpacks to /lib/firmware, maybe a specfile > and debian/ dir in addition. At the moment there is -zero- infrastructure that would allow my tg3 to continue working, when I upgrade to a tg3 driver with external firmware. The user has to put a file in some location manually. That's a complete non-starter, from a usability standpoint. Further, several firmwares, including tg3, are really a collection of bits of information: .text, .bss, and random variables (start addr, image size, ...). The current interface is complete crap for this sort of setup. The firmware loader really needs to be loading -archives- not individual files. We are a -long- way from moving the firmware out of the tg3 source code. Jeff - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/