Re: [LUG] Binary firmware licences

Hi Guys,

A driver project i am involved with is in a fairly unique situation in
the fact that we have a very good relationship with hardware company and
we are currently trying to sort out some firmware problems. Some of the
newer versions of hardware require firmware to operate, the hardware
vendor is willing to place the firmware files for direct download on
their website,( instead of being packaged in a windows .sys driver),
which is *very* nice of them.

Yes.. rather than doing something useful by releasing the source and schematics...

It would be good if we could attach a licence with the firmware that
would permit its redistribution with the open source drivers. We are in
the position to suggest licences but i think they would probably want a
complete licence already done if possible. Are there any existing
licences that are usable for binary firmware distribution? Ideally
compatibility with debian would be nice as they are one of the strictest

If it doesn't have source code you won't get it into Debian. They object to the GPL in many ways: I doubt very much that they'll allow a binary-only driver in.

distros by trying to keep the code licences pure, is it possible to have
binary only compatibility with debian in this way? or is the way to
solve things to have a package that pulls the firmware from the vendors
website when installing?.

Oh the driver is also going in the kernel so it would be really nice to
have out of the box support but i am not sure if this is possible, i
know some kernel drivers use "blobs" (binary strings) that contain the
firmware for some drivers but this causes political problems with the
blobs being non GPL etc. It also depends on the size of the firmware i
suspose, we are currently using the kernel firmware loader.