Dan Harnett <dan...@harnett.name> writes: > In OpenBSD's case, "binary blob" refers to binary-only drivers, not > firmware. Firmware is usually okay if it is documented and under an > acceptable license.
Specifically, the license needs to grant the OpenBSD project the right to redistribute the firmware files. Unfortunately there have been a few cases (wpi, iwn, others I don't remember right away) where redistribution rights have not been granted and the end user will need to download one or more files and copy to /etc/firmware before a device would work. In the two cases I mentioned the workaround was provided by the driver developer who made the firmware available as an installable package for download from his personal web space. It was of course documented in the driver man pages, but the extra step is just enough inconvenience that I'd consider actively seeking laptops with other wireless cards in the future unless that particular manufacturer does the sensible thing. -- Peter N. M. Hansteen, member of the first RFC 1149 implementation team http://bsdly.blogspot.com/ http://www.bsdly.net/ http://www.nuug.no/ "Remember to set the evil bit on all malicious network traffic" delilah spamd[29949]: 85.152.224.147: disconnected after 42673 seconds.
