Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[David Woodhouse]

On Mon, 2008-06-16 at 10:08 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Putting it simply there are 2 possible stances on non-free firmware:
> 
> 1) Its evil and as such should be erradicated, therefor I will not buy or use
>     any devices with it. Nor will I add support for any devices containing
>     non-free firmware to my Free operating system
> 
> 2) Its evil, but allas it is here, so although we are not in favor it we
>     condone it.
> 
> The its evil, but ok as long as not distributed vision is just plain 
> hypocritical, so you are happy *USING* it, and passing device which contain it 
> along to friends / family, but distributing it in a way where it is not hidden 
> inside a device is not OK?

I wouldn't even say it's evil. It's just a fact of life.
Unfortunate, perhaps, but not actually _evil_.

Fedora is quite happy to ship firmware which is merely 'distributable'
and not Free Software. However, we would like to support those who want
to be able to make spins of Fedora which _don't_ include the firmware.

Also, distributing proprietary code without source, as _part_ of a GPL'd
work, is a clear violation of the GPL.

That's why, in the case of the firmware which is currently in the kernel
package itself, FESCo has agreed that we would like to ship that
firmware _separately_ rather than as part of the kernel package.
There's no hypocrisy in that, surely?

Thus the git tree at git.infradead.org/users/dwmw2/firmware-2.6.git
which is making progress on getting drivers to use request_firmware().

For now, this does keep the firmware in the same tree; we run 'make
firmware_install' to make a separate kernel-firmware package. In time,
it'd be nice to remove it to a separate source package altogether -- but
we'll do things one step at a time.

Please send patches :)

-- 
dwmw2