Removal of the proprietary Intel IXP ethernet driver (ixp4{00, 25}-eth, ixp-osal, ixp4xx-csr) from OE

[Rod Whitby <rod@whitby.id.au>]

It seems that I intended to do this, but never got around to it.

<http://lists.linuxtogo.org/pipermail/openembedded-devel/2007-January/001279.html>

There were no objections at the time (over 2 years ago), so unless there
are any objections in the next 48 hours it will be enacted.

-- Rod

Rod Whitby wrote (on 23/01/2007):
> For a long time, the only way to use the internal ethernet port for
> ixp4xx devices was to use the proprietary intel driver.  The driver
> could not be linked with the kernel, and tainted the kernel.
> 
> Thankfully, that has now changed with the development of the open source
> ixp npe kernel driver, which is GPL and can be freely linked with the
> kernel.  Note that the microcode firmware blob (ixp4xx-npe) which needs
> to be loaded by the driver is still Intel Proprietary and requires a
> click-through license on any firmware image that includes it.
> 
> The ixp4xx-kernel package (as of 2.6.19) now supports this new driver.
> It has been tested on the NSLU2, NAS100d, and Loft devices, and as of
> the 0.3.1 version is considered stable.
> 
> Accordingly, I propose to remove the Intel Proprietary driver from the
> OpenEmbedded metadata.  I also propose to remove versions of the
> ixp4xx-kernel earlier than 2.6.19.
> 
> The following packages will be obsoleted, and then removed:
> 
> ixp425-eth/ixp400-eth_1.4
> ixp425-eth/ixp400-eth_1.5
> ixp425-eth/ixp400-eth_1.5.1
> ixp425-eth/ixp425-eth_1.1
> ixp425-eth/ixp425-eth_1.2
> ixp4xx/ixp-osal_1.5
> ixp4xx/ixp-osal_2.0
> ixp4xx/ixp-osal_2.1
> ixp4xx/ixp-osal_2.1.1
> ixp4xx/ixp4xx-csr_1.4
> ixp4xx/ixp4xx-csr_1.5
> ixp4xx/ixp4xx-csr_2.0
> ixp4xx/ixp4xx-csr_2.1
> ixp4xx/ixp4xx-csr_2.1.1
> linux/ixp4xx-kernel_2.6.15.3
> linux/ixp4xx-kernel_2.6.16
> linux/ixp4xx-kernel_2.6.17
> linux/ixp4xx-kernel_2.6.18
> 
> Any objections?
> 
> [Note that this will not affect anyone's ability to build from the
> SlugOS binary release source code archives - they are in SVN.]
> 
> -- Rod