On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 09:42:06PM -0500, Vincent Launchbury wrote:
> Greg KH wrote:
> > The fact that some people claim that the firmware blobs somehow violate
> > the GPLv2 license of the kernel is a claim, not a fact, so please do not
> > state it as such.  
> 
> Hi Greg,
> 
> Thanks for your reply.
> 
> I think you misunderstood my point though. I wasn't saying that the
> firmware violates the GPL, I have no idea whether it does or not. I was
> saying that some of the firmware is non-free software, and therefore the
> license should include more than just GPL-2. This especially effects
> people using ACCEPT_LICENSE to maintain a free system.

Heh, no, it does not, unless your BIOS, and your keyboard firmware, and
your mouse firmware are all under a "free" license.  The only thing
close to this type of machine is the OLPC, and even then, I don't think
all the microcode for the box was ever released.

So it's a pointless effort.

Hint, these firmware blobs do not run on your processor, so they have
nothing to do with the license of your "system".

> > Also note that the majority of these firmware blobs are now removed
> > from the kernel, and are in a separate patckage, so this might be
> > totally irrelevant at this point in time.
> 
> This may be true, but the packages in the main tree still contain
> non-free firmware. If this is fixed in a later release, then GPL-2 would
> be fine for those.

Again, no, the GPLv2 covers the license of all of the code you run in
the kernel package.

> > So please don't state that the Linux kernel is not properly listed as
> > the GPLv2, because it is.
> 
> In linux-2.6.31 for example, here are some excerpts from
> firmware/WHENCE:
> 
> Regarding the keyspan USB driver:
> 	This firmware may not be modified and may only be used with
> 	Keyspan hardware.
> 
> and the emi26 driver:
> 	This firmware may not be modified and may only be used with the
> 	Emagic EMI 2|6 Audio Interface.

And again, you do not run those firmware images on your processor, so
the point is moot.

And note, _I_ placed those images in the kernel image, after consulting
lawyers about this issue, so it's not like I don't know what I am
talking about here.

> I'm not sure if this git repo is part of a separate package or not, but
> it seems the same terms are present:
> http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=blob;f=WHENCE;h=83d245bee1ec44cbd5c0e1a53a3989c57f675c91;hb=f20b0674534a444ae74239843cac19f72c64912b
> 
> Which is why I think the license should be amended. If I'm mistaken,
> please do correct me, but based on my above notes, I believe it should
> be updated.

Please see above why this is all just fine.

thanks,

greg k-h