Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.

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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


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