-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Somebody in the thread at some point said: | On Thursday 18 September 2008, Werner Almesberger wrote: |> Mike Montour wrote: |>> For what it's worth, I would rank your #3 ahead of #2 by a large |>> margin. It is very important for users to be able to upgrade their |>> firmware. |> I fully agree. That policy never made sense to me. | | snip... | |> I actually wonder if there wasn't some miscommunication at its origin. |> After all, many a hard disk's firmware and even the microcode of many |> CPUs can be upgraded, and I haven't heard the FSF call for a ban of |> processing or storage ;-) | | The FSF has an issue with firmware uploaded by the driver, and this reply to | fedora seems fairly unequivocal. | | http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FreeSoftwareAnalysis/FSF
''At present, essentially all GNU/Linux distros include the non-free firmware, because it was too hard to remove. So we decided to overlook the issue for the time being, and not reject distros on this account. This applies to Fedora the same as to other distros. However, progress is being made on removing non-free firmware from Linux. As this becomes feasible, and after some more time goes by, we will no longer want to make an exception for this category of non-free software.'' They basically say they will turn a blind eye for now to closed but redistributable firmware for considering the distro 'free software'. And indeed, Fedora distributes firmware for stuff like iwl4965 from its own main repos and I am sending this using it. Obviously there is no real difference between iwl4965 firmware blob for Intel WLAN distributed in Fedora, and some Atheros or Marvell firmware blob for their WLAN as we would find ourselves shipping (and indeed do currently ship hidden on the module right now). - -Andy -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkjSvUwACgkQOjLpvpq7dMousACglNoFdCzvRF0CvnhUIYZMpsFd W2UAn1lL3peYlF8S7Jhx3PN90vWWaJiz =92hX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
