Re: Binary firmware in the kernel - licensing issues.

From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: Simon Kelley <simon@thekelleys.org.uk>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Binary firmware in the kernel - licensing issues.
Date: 06 May 2003 12:15:36 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <1052219735.28796.28.camel@dhcp22.swansea.linux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <3EB79ECE.4010709@thekelleys.org.uk>

On Maw, 2003-05-06 at 12:38, Simon Kelley wrote:
> This software is copyrighted by and is the sole property of Atmel
> Corporation.  All rights, title, ownership, or other interests
> in the software remain the property of Atmel Corporation.  This
> software may only be used in accordance with the corresponding
> license agreement.  Any un-authorized use, duplication, transmission,
> distribution, or disclosure of this software is expressly forbidden. 

So you can't distribute it at all unless there is other paperwork
involved.

> Given the current SCO-IBM situation I don't want to be responsible for
> introducing any legally questionable IP into the kernel tree.
> 
> This situation must have come up before, how was it solved then?

The easiest approach is to do the firmware load from userspace - which
also keeps the driver size down and makes updating the firmware images
easier for end users.

(Debian as policy will rip the firmware out anyway regardless of what
Linus does btw)

The hotplug interface can be used to handle this.