John Hasler wrote: > Nathanael Nerode writes: >> To me, this means that Broadcom didn't know what the hell it was doing. >> I cannot divine Broadcom's actual intentions from that, and Broadcom can >> easily and convincingly claim that it intended something different from >> what you assume. > > The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well > understood and widely known.
The intent implied by publically releasing a work "under the GPL" but without source code, however, is not well understood or widely known. If indeed anyone understands it. > I don't believe that they would stand any > chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. Have you got a legal opinion to back that up? :-P > The fact that they have already permitted redistribution would count > heavily against them. Well, if you feel safe distributing the tg3 microcode files in non-free, you may. I don't, which is why I have not submitted such a package to Debian. I will be happy to tell you how to take the files from Broadcom's driver and convert them to the form which is loaded by the driver currently in Debian, and to give you my tools for doing so. (Or anyone else who is interested in this.) Perhaps I should construct a package for non-free which instructs users to download Broadcom's driver; then unpacks it, and converts and installs the firmware files appropriately? (I *am* sure that Broadcom permits distribution from their own website directly to end-users, since they pretty much advertise that.) That I would feel safe doing. -- This space intentionally left blank.
