[linux-dvb] Re: Bad news (summary)

[Ralph Metzler <rjkm@convergence.de>]

Carsten Koch writes:
 > mocm@convergence.de wrote:
 > ...
 > > The firmware is in a sense part of the hardware.
 > > We have permission by Fujitsu-Siemens to distribute and change the
 > > firmware.
 > 
 > Marcus, please correct me if I am wrong: 
 > 
 > *  The driver is GPL, but without your special firmware
 >    the driver does not work.


No, without the correct driver the card+firmware does not work :-)

 
 > *  The firmware is not GPL and there is a risk that due
 >    to legal problems it will no longer be distributed in
 >    the future.

Neither Marcus or I said anything about legal problems with this.
The firmware is not GPLed, the driver is. There was a question if this
is legal. We quoted some examples of other GPL drivers with 
binary-only firmwares. The firmware even runs on a different CPU.
Even on the same CPU binary-only modules which interact with GPL
modules and the kernel are allowed. We don't see a problem.

The thread started with the question if we could release the firmware
source code. What we said is that we would get legal problems if we 
would do this.


That's about it.


Ralph
 


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