Wireless in FC4

[Kyrre Ness Sjobak]

man, 07.03.2005 kl. 14.09 skrev Dan Williams:
> On Mon, 7 Mar 2005, Rodd Clarkson wrote:
> > AFAIK, the only limitation on distributing this is that a copy of the
> > license must be included with the firmware.  This shouldn't stop Fedora
> > distributing the firmware.
> 
> http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=4
> http://kerneltrap.org/node/4202
> 
> Remember, OpenBSD tried and completely failed to get Intel to relicense the 
> firmware under a FOSS-type license so that it was easily distributable.
> 
> Dan

OK. So Intel won't let their firmware be redistributed. But what about
all the other vendors? ref:

"Several vendors including Symbol, Zydas, and Atmel have responded
favorably, licensing their firmwares so that they can be distributed
freely with OpenBSD."

What about those? Are those firmwares OK to distribute with fedora, or
is it a no-no? They are binary-only, after all. What about other
firmwares, such as bluetooth dongle firmware (etc)?

As far as i can see, there is no reason to say no. The firmware is IMO.
just a binary blob the driver uploads the hardware. Just a piece, a part
of the hw which are stored on the HW of the computer instead of on the
card itself. I we should demand hardware vendors to free up their
firmware, why shouldn't we demand them to give us access to the chip
construction drawings (or whatever they use)? Why not simply just sit
there saying "they are evil. I won't play with you.", and make anaconda
refusing to install if "non-open hw" are detected?

Of course we won't do that. But please, if Linux is going to become easy
to use and deploy, please don't act as fanatics. It isn't going to get
us anywhere, except looking like idiots.

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