Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 11 Jul 2006 17:35:48 -0700 | From | James Ketrenos <> | Subject | Re: Will there be Intel Wireless 3945ABG support? |
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Alan Cox wrote: > Ar Maw, 2006-07-11 am 21:25 +0300, ysgrifennodd Alon Bar-Lev: >> And to have a system that you know exactly what running in it... >> Having a binary closed source violate this. > > Also if the binary only chunk of code is neccessary to make the open > source bit work then its a derivative work as I understand the > situation,
Following that logic one must draw the conclusion that the firmware that runs on a scsi controller is derived from the driver provided with the kernel that communicates with it.
The obvious distinction between scsi firmware and the regulatory daemon blob being discussed here is that the regulatory daemon runs on the host vs. an adapter. However, if you consider the communication interface between the kernel and the user space daemon to be analogous to the communication interface between the kernel driver and the firmware that runs on an adapter, then the distinction of running on the host is irrelevant.
> which makes it all rather questionable from a licensing > perspsective.
There are no questions from a licensing standpoint.
The regulatory daemon is in no way derived from any GPL work, and the GPL driver is provided with everything it needs to talk to the interfaces defined through the ipw3945_daemon.h header file.
> Hopefully Intel will find a sensible solution to the problem or someone > will just reverse engineer it away.
Invariably someone will make such a piece of code available on Linux.
To that end I would encourage anyone that may be interested in using such a piece of code to read the regulatory notice packaged with our drivers, and linked for your reference here[1].
James
1. http://bughost.org/ipw3945/NOTICE
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