Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

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?"

1 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm.. by noselasd · · Score: 0, Troll

    This is usually firmware for a device connected to the pc..
    Do we really need the sourcecode for it ? .. Why ?
    And where does this stop ? Should we not install linux
    on computers with a non open source BIOS ?
    What about devices with firmware already loaded and where it need not
    be loaded by a driver from an OS, should we "ban" those as well ?