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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2024 12:08:09 +0100
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Subject: Re: License of old broadcom BT firmwares and WiFi calibration files
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To: Arend Van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>,
 Svyatoslav Ryhel <clamor95@gmail.com>
Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
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From: Hans de Goede <hdegoede@redhat.com>
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Hi,

On 1/3/24 10:14, Arend Van Spriel wrote:
> + linux-wireless
> + Hans de Goede
> 
> 
> On December 16, 2023 9:14:48 PM Svyatoslav Ryhel <clamor95@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> сб, 16 груд. 2023 р. о 21:57 Arend van Spriel
>> <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com> пише:
>>>
>>> On 12/16/2023 6:45 PM, Svyatoslav Ryhel wrote:
>>>> Greetings!
>>>>
>>>> I am trying to submit bluetooth firmwares (BCM4329B1.*,*.hcd and
>>>> BCM4330B1.*,*.hcd) and wifi calibration files
>>>> (brcmfmac4329-sdio.*,*.txt and brcmfmac4329-sdio.*,*.txt) from a few
>>>> Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 based devices into linux-fimware.
>>>>
>>>> I have faced ambiguous license issue since those files were part of
>>>> Android Images of different vendors. Those vendors did not provide a
>>>> license nor for android images, not for these files.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe you can clarify licensing of these files and you can suggest a
>>>> way they could be accepted into linux-firmware?
>>>
>>> Basically, the firmware files in linux-firmware fall under the license
>>> conditions that are in the repository. This means the firmware you want
>>> to submit would get a different license. The main reason is that the
>>> license in linux-firmware allows redistributing the firmware files which
>>> is an important aspect for linux distro maintainers.
>>>
>>> So the device vendors would have to give their blessing. For these old
>>> chipsets they probably got it from Broadcom. I never had much contact
>>> with BT side so not sure who to contact about this.
>>
>> So even though those files are built from Broadcom sources they still
>> fall under device vendor licensing? Or am I misunderstanding
>> something? I have to contact the vendor of each device for a licence
>> regarding those files?
> 
> If you only have the binary firmware files it is  hard to say. Can you refer to a public repository where these can be found?
> 
>>
>>> Regarding the calibration files it is a bit awkward. There is a
>>> precedent as these have been published by community under GPL license.
>>> Broadcom never released those as they are board specific and the device
>>> vendor should provide them. So maybe you can submit those without any issue.
>>
>> So I may modify them with a GPL license header and pretend this is how it was?
>> Looks like an affair but alright.
> 
> Well. Most if not all have been submitted by Hans de Goede so maybe he can advice how to go about with this.

The practice of submitting these upstream was actually started by Linaro.

I believe the thinking behind this is that the calibration + gpio info
in these files are purely functional and thus this is not copyrightable.
Note I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.

The nvram files as submitted to linux-firmware have all comments stripped
and have the name=val pairs sorted alphabetically by name.

Regards,

Hans