On Sun, 2010-04-11 at 16:20 +0200, Christian PERRIER wrote: > David didn't leave the linux-...@packages.qa.d.o CC'ed. > > Re-adding it so that kernel packages maintainers can comment (Ben at > first). > > > > Quoting David Prévot (dav...@altern.org): > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > > Hash: SHA1 > > > > Le 31/03/2010 12:37, Christian PERRIER a écrit : > > > Most firmware files are not included in the system because > > > no source code is available for them. You may need to reconfigure > > > the package manager to include the non-free section of the package > > > archive before you can install these firmware files. > > > > It may be pedantic, but the reason why most firmware are not available > > is because they do not conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines: > > they might be open source with a non compatible license. > > > > Anyway, I don't know for sure for the Linux kernel : all the non free > > firmware may also be closed source.
Indeed, we do not have source code for any of the non-free firmware. In many cases it is under a BSDish licence and would thus become DFSG-free if the source code was released. > > Unless you are exclusively referencing the firmware-linux-nonfree > > package, which is in the non-free section, some firmware can also be > > available through the contrib section (bcm43xx-fwcutter used to download > > sources, extract and install firmware from these downloaded files. I > > don't know if some packages are still running this way). [...] They might be; I hadn't thought tof that. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
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