Messages in this thread | ![/](/images/icornerl.gif) | | Subject | Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice. | From | (Eric W. Biederman) | Date | 06 Apr 2005 13:22:36 -0600 |
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Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> 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.
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