Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Wed, Apr 06, 2005 at 01:22:36PM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > 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. > > So, where is the source for it ?
The GPL'd driver that broadcom distributes. The history of tg3.c is that broadcom's bcm57xx driver drove the hardware correctly but not linux so it was rewritten from scratch. Beyond that you need to talk to Broadcom. But if the originator of the bits distributes them gpl from a redistribution point the kernel is fine. It sounds like you are now looking at the question of are the huge string of hex characters the preferred form for making modifications to firmware. Personally I would be surprised but those hunks are small enough it could have been written in machine code. So I currently have no reason to believe that anything has been done improperly with that code. Eric - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
