Hi, I think important to open a new thread to focus on solutions rather than trolls or opinions, deceitful as the news from debian-legal is.
There's some hope that appears in this thread : http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/10/msg00154.html I quote a question and the answer by Nathanael Nerode <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> about a wifi driver[quote] > so it should go in main because it's free software. As you > correctly stated, the card needs a firmware, not the device driver. > The hardware device may not perform useful work until its firmware has > been loaded, but we distribute the driver and not the device. Right, but can the driver do anything useful? Actually, I'm inclined to be very broad-minded on that point. If the driver, for instance, can load arbitrary microcode to the hardware at run-time, then it certainly does something useful. (It allows firmware loading and allows the testing of open-source firmware alternatives, at the very least.)[/quote] Who is Nathanel Nerode BTW ? (sorry, google did not answer clearly to me...). Is his opinion of value and decisions final ? So the way is : 1- either obtain that firmware and BNM are put under a free licence by ADI (more on this below) 2- or (and) enable the loading of firmware from an outside source than the code (I'm talking in terms of requirement, not in term of solution) For the first (1), I still do not have contacts from Sagem or ADI, unfortunately. And it won't happen overnight (well over this night). The option would be to obtain all GPL (with sources, tools to compile, just in case... to be defined more clearly) Second option is "all GPL" for firmware/BNM till now (and perhaps in the future too for newer versions) For the second (2), a solution has been proposed by mathieu castet that should be discussed - there's a possibility : https://mail.gna.org/public/eagleusb-dev/2004-10/msg00087.html - extract firmware to gain room in the module - possibility of keeping older firmware for older modems (if it is free...) - some disadvantages : - https://mail.gna.org/public/eagleusb-dev/2004-10/msg00062.html (french) loading too late the firmware after the modem is on, makes the modem go berserk - hotplug should not be necessary (is it ?) - compatibility with 2.4.18 till 2.4.23 kernels is problematic This solution would not be for 2.0.0 but perhaps in 2.0.1 ? If you see other solutions, you're welcome. @++ Ben'. aka baud123
