On 03/08/2012 10:55 AM, Peter Robinson wrote: > On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 3:33 PM, Tom Callaway <tcallawa@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On 03/08/2012 10:16 AM, Peter Robinson wrote: >> >>> In some cases they do and we don't need to worry about it, in other >>> cases like the PandaBoard they're likely just being too tight to put a >>> flash chip on the board to hold the FW/BIOS so you have to have a >>> small partition at the beginning of the SD to hold it and the SoC >>> basically searches for a location that is set by pin combinations for >>> the SoC boot code off serial/mmc/usb, >> >> So, the existing firmware exception is tightly worded, it says: >> >> "The files must be necessary for the functionality of open source code >> being included in Fedora." >> >> I'm not sure this BIOS/FW code actually meets that criteria, can you >> make that case? > > Without these files the device will no boot and there is no Fedora on > them? These aren't say files for flashing Fedora onto the device such > as an Android style updater utility. These initialise the device's HW > and then load the kernel into memory so the OS can boot. By including > them it will allow us to integrate the writing of the SD cards with > tools like livecd-tools (or equivalent) to ease the creation of images > for use. Eg the MLO file needs to be the very first file on the vfat > partition in the first block of the filesystem otherwise it just won't > boot. I think you're both missing the point here. The intent of that clause was to say that Firmware $FOO is necessary for Free Software $BAR to work. Free Software $BAR works fine on x86 without Firmware $FOO. It works fine on some ARM systems that do not need Firmware $FOO. In fact, $BAR doesn't have any knowledge of $FOO whatsoever. So, to claim that $FOO is "necessary for the functionality of open source code being included in Fedora", well, that's not right. It doesn't say "must be necessary to boot some hardware". I don't think we want to be packaging up system BIOSes (or their equivalent). Our firmware exception is intended _only_ to enable FOSS code that wouldn't work without it. I realize that it would be easier to have these files packaged so that you could make easy images, but I just don't think this is in keeping with the Free Software goals of Fedora. I think you're going to have to ask the Board whether they wish to extend the Firmware exception to explicitly include packaging of non-free BIOS files (or BIOS-like files). I'm not willing to make that call (and I'm not sure I support it). ~tom == Fedora Project _______________________________________________ arm mailing list arm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/arm
