From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
Cc: Oliver Endriss <o.endriss@gmx.de>,
linux-dvb@linuxtv.org, Jaswinder Singh <jaswinder@infradead.org>,
LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
kernelnewbies <kernelnewbies@nl.linux.org>,
kernel-janitors <kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org>,
David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Subject: Re: [linux-dvb] [PATCH] Remove fdump tool for av7110 firmware
Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2008 21:45:37 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20080707214537.49f69b51@the-village.bc.nu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20080707180222.4b4a53a9@gaivota>
> Having a binary firmware inside a GPL'd file seems to be (at least for some
> people) a GPL violation, since the firmware source code should also be released
> with GPL (please read [1] for a good article about this).
The firmware is usually a separate program, running on a separate
processor communicating by a standard API and is used by Linux, Windows
and other OS's. Thats not quite the same as say the Nvidia driver.
If it happens to keep the GPL zealots happier then fine, but there are
good sound technical reasons for doing it
- compiled in firmware isn't pageable
- compiled in firmware can't be updated separately
- it makes it really hard for end users told to "try the new firmware" -
especially in the enterprise space.
Clearly there are some cases that is less relevant - drivers where the
firmware/OS pair must match such as aic7xxx where you don't really want
firmware floating around loose.
Alan
prev parent reply other threads:[~2008-07-07 21:20 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2008-06-22 12:54 Jaswinder Singh
2008-07-06 1:15 ` [linux-dvb] " Oliver Endriss
2008-07-06 5:04 ` Jaswinder Singh
2008-07-06 9:09 ` Klaus Schmidinger
2008-07-06 11:17 ` David Woodhouse
2008-07-06 14:29 ` Devin Heitmueller
2008-07-06 14:48 ` David Woodhouse
2008-07-07 2:52 ` Oliver Endriss
2008-07-07 21:02 ` Mauro Carvalho Chehab
2008-07-07 20:45 ` Alan Cox [this message]
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20080707214537.49f69b51@the-village.bc.nu \
--to=alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk \
--cc=dwmw2@infradead.org \
--cc=jaswinder@infradead.org \
--cc=kernel-janitors@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=kernelnewbies@nl.linux.org \
--cc=linux-dvb@linuxtv.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=mchehab@infradead.org \
--cc=o.endriss@gmx.de \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox
all inboxes | Powered by JetHome®