From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753574Ab0JSSVw (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:21:52 -0400 Received: from mail-gx0-f174.google.com ([209.85.161.174]:63963 "EHLO mail-gx0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751531Ab0JSSVv (ORCPT ); Tue, 19 Oct 2010 14:21:51 -0400 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=sender:message-id:date:from:user-agent:mime-version:to:cc:subject :references:in-reply-to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; b=CJrU+mOYNhaYWUIb5Oavx/9mVXTlpbMnwmfZfjRk50arhIo2fAV7BPJM/KtyGTSnzd ZxrD0gtz2JkjCkgnOLfu8xrmy2mf0tjj8clrLLbvM4Ze9f1iNXH1t497XJkNkYHmdVWd oVMYlcrfEBU4wpKvxT7wWsTSlkVgNSWXbeADs= Message-ID: <4CBDE1C1.4020204@lwfinger.net> Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:21:53 -0500 From: Larry Finger User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.12) Gecko/20100914 SUSE/3.0.8 Thunderbird/3.0.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Arnd Bergmann CC: David Woodhouse , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux-firmware: Add firmware file for r8712u (RTL8192SU) References: <4cbdbf3b.Ek+PDAiA1jX27HRq%Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net> <1287504505.1084.23.camel@i7.infradead.org> <4CBDC6AF.3060902@lwfinger.net> <201010191935.40788.arnd@arndb.de> In-Reply-To: <201010191935.40788.arnd@arndb.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On 10/19/2010 12:35 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Tuesday 19 October 2010 18:26:23 Larry Finger wrote: >> The license information that I put into WHENCE is in the source-code file that >> contains the MODULE_LICENSE(GPL) statement. As the firmware header file is part >> of that set of files, I thought the GPL license would apply to all. Is that not >> so? If not, I'm not sure how to proceed. > > In theory, the person that added the firmware files to the kernel under the > terms of the GPL or anyone who distributed them before should be able to provide > the source code for the firmware. > > If you think that the driver has been developed legally, just ask the author > of the firmware for the source and add it to your patch. I was the one that added the drive, including the firmware file, to the kernel. I know the driver was developed legally. I took source files that contain a GPL license (including the firmware source) from the Realtek public site, cleaned up the driver, added a copyright for my changes, and got permission from Realtek to submit the result to the staging directory through Greg K-H. Greg requested a TODO item to take the firmware currently embedded in a header file with 10,197 lines and 734,033 characters, extract it from the driver, and submit it to linux-firmware, which is what I'm trying to do now. Once the firmware is accepted and distros get the new version of linux-firmware, I will submit the changes that use the standard firmware-loading mechanism to get external firmware, and delete that large header file. Those changes are now in use on my system. > If you don't think it was done correctly, try to get a license for redistributing > the firmware as binary and list the license terms in the WHENCE file. > > Hint: some files of the driver contain these "interesting" conditions: > > /* > * Copyright(c) 2008 - 2010 Realtek Corporation. All rights reserved. > * Linux device driver for RTL8192U > * > * Based on the r8187 driver, which is: > * Copyright 2004-2005 Andrea Merello , et al. > * This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it > * under the terms of version 2 of the GNU General Public License as > * published by the Free Software Foundation. That Merello copyright really has little to do with the current driver. As Realtek included it in their source, I left it in, but consider it to be an honorary citation. Larry