Author: jurij-guest Date: Sat Sep 30 19:48:42 2006 New Revision: 7565 Added: people/jurij/firmware-position-statement.txt
Log: Draft of firmware position statement. Added: people/jurij/firmware-position-statement.txt ============================================================================== --- (empty file) +++ people/jurij/firmware-position-statement.txt Sat Sep 30 19:48:42 2006 @@ -0,0 +1,39 @@ +Debian kernel team identifies the following three types of firmware, currently +found in the Linux kernel: + +1. Sourceless binary blobs with no license, no explicit permission to redistribute, or + an explicit prohibition to redistribute. + + This category currently includes the dabusb, dgrs, emi62, keyspan, smctr, + cops, emi26, and 3c359 drivers. Removal of these drivers will have minimal + impact on the users, as neither of them are popular or likely to be required + during the installation. + +2. Sourceless binary blobs distributed under GPL. + + This situation has been interpreted as a violation of the terms of GPL, which + requires the distribution to be accompanied by the source code. Removal of + firmware in this category will cause effective removal of a large number of + important drivers, resulting in a severe negative impact on our users. + +3. Binary blobs violating DFSG for other reasons. + + This category includes firmware which contains obfuscated source, or is not + allowed to be modified. While less numerous than category 2, removal of + drivers in this category will also have a significant negative + impact on our users. + +It has been agreed within Debian kernel team, that the firmware in category 1 +is not acceptable in Debian. It is the intention of the kernel team to prune the +affected drivers from the upstream tarball. + +While we continuosly strive to improve the situation with DFSG-compliance of kernel +packages, and there has been progress on it since Sarge release, we recognize that +fixing all the problems with drivers falling into categories 2 and 3 is not feasible +in the etch release time frame. Alternative solutions, like removal of the affected +drivers would have a severe negative impact on our users, and would be detrimentary +to the Debian's goal of advancement of free software. Therefore, we propose to accept +the drivers from categories 2 and 3 in the kernel packages for etch, given that an +agreement can be achieved with release and ftp-master teams, or the issue is +resolved by way of General Resolution. + _______________________________________________ Kernel-svn-changes mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/kernel-svn-changes
