On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:59:50PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the
device? If the total amount of non-free software
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:45:18PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
Ok, I guess somewhere I lost track of exactly what was being argued in this
thread. I agree, if the user (or some group of users to whom the driver is
useful) already have the required firmware, either in the device's flash or
on
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:45:18PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
Ok, I guess somewhere I lost track of exactly what was being argued in this
thread. I agree, if the user (or some group of users to whom the driver is
useful) already have the required firmware, either in the device's flash or
on
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I don't understand how there's any disagreement in this case: it's clearly
software, covered by the DFSG (or at least the one Debian will be using
soon), it's required (a Depends), and clearly non-free.
On the other hand, if it's clearly software when
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
--
ciao,
Marco
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The total amount of non-free software on a user's system is different if the
firmware comes pre-loaded on the device than if we have to load it from the
OS, isn't it?
No.
--
ciao,
Marco
Ken Arromdee [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Sun, 24 Oct 2004, Raul Miller wrote:
The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware,
because
the firmware can be removed.
The person doesn't have the device at that point -- only part of it.
The same reasoning applies for
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I don't understand how there's any disagreement in this case: it's clearly
software, covered by the DFSG (or at least the one Debian will be using
soon), it's required (a Depends), and clearly non-free.
On the
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
And the driver requires a functioning hardware device. Thus,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
And the driver requires a functioning hardware device. Thus, the
This is not an use of the verb require
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On the other hand, if it's clearly software when it's on CD then it's
clearly software when it's on eeprom.
False. That's why we call it firmware, not just software living on a device.
Get real. Software does not change its nature depending on the media
it's stored on.
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
And the driver requires a functioning hardware device. Thus, the
loadable firmware
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 11:44:37AM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
Then, how do you explain the ipw2200
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 01:18:18PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
Get real. Software does not change its nature depending on the media
it's stored on.
Some aspects do change. But it's true that what a person thinks about
that software doesn't need to change (depending on the person doing the
On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 07:07 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On the other hand, if it's clearly software when it's on CD then it's
clearly software when it's on eeprom.
False. That's why we call it firmware, not just software living on a
On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 08:56:26AM -0400, Raul Miller wrote:
I probably would, if I knew for certain what you meant by work titles.
By work title, I mean the title of the work in a legal sense; for
example, as it is registered with the U.S. Copyright Office in the case,
of copyrights, or with
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 12:52:19PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Brian, we are talking about identical code.
Are we?
Software doesn't stop being software if it's burned into a ROM instead
of being supplied with the OS.
It does, however, cease to be a dependency issue if those who have the
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 12:52:19PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Brian, we are talking about identical code.
Are we?
In many contexts, yes.
Software doesn't stop being software if it's burned into a ROM instead
of being supplied with the OS.
It
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 12:52:19PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Brian, we are talking about identical code.
Are we?
In many contexts, yes.
Software doesn't stop being software if it's burned into a ROM instead
of being supplied with the OS.
It
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 02:21:03PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Whichever argument you're using, it leads to the following situation. A
vendor releases a piece of hardware. It requires run-time loadable
firmware. We put the driver in contrib. A customer comes to the vendor
and asks for a
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 02:21:03PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Does this not strike you as mad? We make a distinction between main and
contrib because we want to discourage non-free code. The distinction
you're drawing instead merely encourages vendors to
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Oh, wait, maybe you're suggesting that they had some OTHER reason for
putting those bits in rom? If that's the case, your claim that it
doesn't help our users is a bit specious.
It's not obvious that this would be an improvement which benefits users.
--
ciao,
Marco
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
Then, how do you explain the ipw2200 case where driver version 0.5 and
less will only work with a
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 07:07 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On the other hand, if it's clearly software when it's on CD then it's
clearly software when it's on eeprom.
False. That's why we call it
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote:
The reason we don't include free software that has non-free
dependencies in main is that we want to discourage people from using
non-free software. If the user already has non-free code in ROM,
then there is the same amount of non-free software being
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
And the driver requires a functioning hardware device. Thus,
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
And the driver requires a
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 10:59:50PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Steve Langasek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 03:41:13AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Is this the case even if the firmware is in a flash chip attached to the
device? If the total amount of non-free software
On Oct 25, Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Marco d'Itri) writes:
On Oct 25, Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Marco d'Itri [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware,
because
the firmware can be removed.
The person doesn't have the device at that point -- only part of it.
The same reasoning applies for both examples if you refer
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
It does strike me as a bit mad, to suggest that hardware vendors are
going to be redesign their hardware, to move a driver from debian contrib
to main.
If it were that important to them, they'd should have done it right in
the first place.
On Mon,
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 04:38:06PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
It's not obvious that this would be an improvement which benefits users.
Which is not the same claim as it doesn't help our users.
--
Raul
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
That quip was a comment on the straw-man scenario where hardware vendors
were redesigning their products to move a driver for that hardware from
debian contrib to main.
And, if that seems nonsensical to you, you're right -- or, at least,
that scenario
Ken Arromdee [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
The person who has the device doesn't neceessarily have the firmware,
because
the firmware can be removed.
The person doesn't have the device at that point -- only part of it.
The same reasoning
Marco d'Itri wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Given that the entire purpose of the driver is to actually *drive a
device*, and that it can't do that at all without the firmware, then the
No, apparently you do not understand how the driver, hardware and
firmware interact. The driver is fully
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Regardless of whether this dependency is expressed in our package
management system, most drivers depend on non-free firmware.
They depend on the presence of appropriate and properly functioning
devices, which are typically implemented using non-free
Hello Andrew,
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 23:32:17, Andrew Suffield wrote:
It probably isn't legitimate to claim a license in this manner in most
jurisdictions anyway. You normally need an explicit grant from the
copyright holder (while there are some case-law precedents in some
places for
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 04:43:50PM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
Then, how do you explain the ipw2200 case where driver version 0.5 and
less will only work with a certain firmware and version 0.6 and
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Regardless of whether this dependency is expressed in our package
management system, most drivers depend on non-free firmware.
They depend on the presence of appropriate and properly functioning
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Sebastian Feltel wrote:
On Sun, Oct 24, 2004 at 23:32:17, Andrew Suffield wrote:
It probably isn't legitimate to claim a license in this manner in most
jurisdictions anyway. You normally need an explicit grant from the
copyright holder (while there are some case-law
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
And, if that seems nonsensical to you, you're right -- or, at least,
that scenario seems rather nonsensical to me. Debian currently doesn't
represent the kind of market which could lead to this kind of situation.
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 05:44:36PM
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Raul Miller [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
And, if that seems nonsensical to you, you're right -- or, at least,
that scenario seems rather nonsensical to me. Debian currently doesn't
represent the kind of market which could lead to this kind of situation.
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 11:44:37AM +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
The driver is opening a block of data on disk, reading it and
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Brian Thomas Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Regardless of whether this dependency is expressed in our package
management system, most drivers depend on non-free firmware.
They depend on the presence of
On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 14:51 -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
Matthew Garrett [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
There's no interesting functional difference between these two things,
except that in one case the driver has to make a call to load the
firmware and in the other case it doesn't.
And
Marco d'Itri wrote:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Huh? If a driver requires a firmware blob be copied from a driver CD,
Please repeat after me: drivers do not require firmwares, hardware
devices require firmwares.
First of all, no: *both* require the firmware in order to perform their
function.
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Glenn Maynard wrote:
The driver is opening a block of data on disk, reading it and sending it
to the hardware. If that data does not exist, the driver will be
incapable of driving the hardware. For the driver to work, in addition
to installing it and the hardware device,
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
And that is a functional difference: in one case the owner of the
device who has downloaded some Debian software has to go get some
other software and load it onto his machine; in the other case he
doesn't.
That's not a functional difference.
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Josh Triplett wrote:
However, suppose that your statement were true. Why stop there?
Consider the case of a piece of hardware which could not be initialized
correctly except by the Windows driver. In order for the device to
work, a user would need to boot up Windows,
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 02:23:52PM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote:
And if the device has an eprom, then for the driver to work, you have to find
and install an eprom containing a copy of the code.
Which device is this?
(The eprom is harder to lose, of course, so it's *usually* already
installed,
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
And that is a functional difference: in one case the owner of the
device who has downloaded some Debian software has to go get some
other software and load it onto his machine; in the other case he
doesn't.
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 02:23:52PM -0700, Ken Arromdee wrote:
And if the device has an eprom, then for the driver to work, you have to find
and install an eprom containing a copy of the code. (The eprom is harder to
lose, of course, so it's *usually* already installed, but it's not clear that
Glenn Maynard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Fundamentally, if I can say apt-get install driver and have the driver
work (at least for some hardware), it's main; if I have to first track
down and install some non-free pieces, it's contrib. This but it's not
the driver that needs it, the driver
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 11:46:03PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
Oh, come off it. The social contract says:
We provide the guidelines that we use to determine if a work is free
in the document entitled The Debian Free Software Guidelines. We
promise that the Debian system and all its
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 11:46:03PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
I see nothing that suggests that non-free component is only meant to
apply to material shipped by Debian. Nor is there any suggestion that it
applies only to software (which is unsurprising, given the care taken to
remove all
On Mon, 25 Oct 2004, Matthew Garrett wrote:
I see nothing that suggests that non-free component is only meant
to apply to material shipped by Debian. Nor is there any suggestion
that it applies only to software (which is unsurprising, given the
care taken to remove all reference to software).
Glenn Maynard writes:
Marco's argument appears to be that drivers should be allowed in main
that only function if they have access to a non-free firmware blob;
that a driver that, lacking the file, merely bails and says download
this non-free piece first should be allowed in main.
One
On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 09:50:42PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote:
One argument that has appeared previously is that the driver depends
on the firmware blob because if a different blob were used, the
hardware might behave differently. That begs for consideration of the
obverse case: the hardware
Hello. I researching why MPEG-1 video and audio layers 1 and 2 do not
require any royalty payments. I have been googling for the past hour
and haven't been able to come up with any concrete explanation
(although it may just be that my google skills are not up to snuff).
I am guessing that
Glenn Maynard writes:
So you're saying that the loaded-at-runtime option allows for DFSG-free
versions to be implemented, so they should be allowed in main to encourage
that particular design option over the static ROM option. (There's
also the EPROM option, which acts like hardware--the
61 matches
Mail list logo
