Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261771AbVDEPAw (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 11:00:52 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261773AbVDEPAw (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 11:00:52 -0400 Received: from hades.almg.gov.br ([200.198.60.36]:40322 "EHLO hades.almg.gov.br") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261771AbVDEPAl (ORCPT ); Tue, 5 Apr 2005 11:00:41 -0400 Message-ID: <4252A821.9030506@almg.gov.br> Date: Tue, 05 Apr 2005 12:00:49 -0300 From: Humberto Massa User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0+ (Windows/20050224) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: 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: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1600 Lines: 35 Josselin Mouette wrote: >You are mixing apples and oranges. The fact that the GFDL sucks has >nothing to do with the firmware issue. With the current situation of >firmwares in the kernel, it is illegal to redistribute binary images of >the kernel. Full stop. End of story. Bye bye. Redhat and SuSE may still >be willing to distribute such binary images, but it isn't our problem. > > Yes, GFDL has nothing to do with the main issue. No, it is not necessarily illegal to redistribute binary images of the kernel as they are today (see below). The first problem is that they (the complete w/firmware kernel binary images) are not DFSG-free, anyway. The second problem is that some firmware blobs don't have explicitly stated in the kernel tree which exactly are their licensing terms for redistribution -- those are, in principle, undistributable. >Putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes them distributable. Some >distributions will want to include them, some others not. But the >important point is that it makes that redistribution legal. > > If putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes *them* distributable, then the binary kernel image is already distributable -- just not DFSG-free. The important fact WRT Debian, IMHO, is that putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes the kernel binary image DFSG-free. HTH, Massa - 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/