[Ksummit-2008-discuss] RFC: Moving firmware blobs out of the kernel.

Mauro Carvalho Chehab mchehab at infradead.org
Sun Jun 8 04:13:29 PDT 2008


On Fri, 30 May 2008 02:04:18 +0300
David Woodhouse <dwmw2 at infradead.org> wrote:

> The firmware is an independent and separate work in itself. Section 2 of
> the GPL talks about such sections of the work, explicitly.

For me, both inside kernel or on a separate tree would produce similar results.
Yet, a separate tree will be a little more painful.

One alternative to keep this at kernel -git tree would be to write a COPYING or
LICENSE file at firmware dir, explicitly stating that most of those firmwares
have proprietary licenses and are there just to make easier for kernel develoment.

Being in-tree or out kernel tree, we should explicitly state what license each
firmware uses, and having the license terms of proprietary firmwares there.

I would add a metatag at the .ihex file to reference to what license applies to
each firmware. Something like FIRMWARE_LICENSE("some vendor license #1"). For
those legacy firmwares where we don't know, we may simply add "unknown".

Cheers,
Mauro


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