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Debian Removes Binary-only Firmware From Kernel

Posted by timothy on from the and-they're-stickin'-to-it dept.

mbanck writes "The Debian Linux kernel maintainer has announced that he will remove firmware from GPL'd drivers which obviously lack source code in its preferred form (i.e. something more appropriate than a hexdump inside a char[]), in accordance with the release manager's decision. The alternatives are user-space loading of the firmware via hotplug's request_firmware() API or making the vendors aware of the issue. How do the other distributions handle this?"

2 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. tg3 Driver Affected by semaj · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the drivers I use - the tg3 Gigabit Ethernet driver - is affected by this. The driver currently contains non-free firmware that is uploaded to the card in a couple of cases.

    An interesting thing about this driver is that it appears to work (to the extent that most people need) without the firmware. There has been some attempt on the linux-kernel mailing list to make the firmware part of the kernel optional. That way Debian can just turn that option off and presumably remove the associated firmware from their kernel. Anyone who needs the bug fixes/features provided by the firmware can use a non-Debian kernel.

    Not everyone's in favour of this idea though. There's more about it on the mailing list if anyone's interested.

    --
    Meep meep
  2. Re:Let me see if I've got this... by luferbu · · Score: 5, Informative

    This has been already discused in the past, in fact, Richard Stallman published an article where he states that the Linux kernel is in violation with the GPL because of the firmware included without source code, see the article at here