Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262201AbVDGIGI (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Apr 2005 04:06:08 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262196AbVDGIGI (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Apr 2005 04:06:08 -0400 Received: from ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com ([166.70.28.69]:9402 "EHLO ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262201AbVDGIFz (ORCPT ); Thu, 7 Apr 2005 04:05:55 -0400 To: Arjan van de Ven Cc: Christoph Hellwig , 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: <20050404141647.GA28649@pegasos> <20050404175130.GA11257@kroah.com> <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> From: ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman) Date: 06 Apr 2005 13:22:36 -0600 In-Reply-To: <1112693287.6275.30.camel@laptopd505.fenrus.org> Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.3 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1523 Lines: 27 Arjan van de Ven writes: > On Tue, 2005-04-05 at 11:11 +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 05, 2005 at 09:49:25AM +0100, Ian Campbell wrote: > > > I don't think you did get a rejection, a few people said that _they_ > > > weren't going to do it, but if you want to then go ahead. I think people > > > are just fed up of people bringing up the issue and then failing to do > > > anything about it -- so prove them wrong ;-) > > > > Actually patches to add firmware loader support to tg3 got rejected. > > I think they will be accepted if they first introduce a transition > period where tg3 will do request_firmware() and only use the built-in > firmware if that fails. Second step is to make the built-in firmware a > config option and then later on when the infrastructure matures for > firmware loading/providing firmware it can be removed from the driver > entirely. For tg3 a transition period shouldn't be needed as firmware loading is only needed on old/buggy hardware which is not the common case. Or to support advanced features which can be disabled. I am fairly certain in that case the firmware came from the bcm5701 broadcom driver for the tg3 which I think is gpl'd. So the firmware may legitimately be under the GPL. Eric - 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/