RE: Going from Broadcom's sources to wireless card to WPA network

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



 
 Bruno Wolff III wrote: 
 >On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 09:06:25 -0800,
 >  Suresh Govindachar <sgovindachar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 >>Bruno Wolff III wrote: 
 >>>On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 15:10:24 +0000,
 >>>  Suresh Govindachar <sgovindachar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
 >>>> 
 >>>> But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports
 >>>> Linux on:
 >>>> http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such
 >>>> support has existed since October 2008.)
 >>>
 >>>Because they don't let people redistribute their firmware.
 >> 
 >> They do;  that's why they have the linux_sta.php page linked
 >> above.
 >
 > That's not what I said. That page is Broadcom distributing
 > the firmware.  They don't let other people do it (at least
 > not without signing a contract).  
 
 Not so;  I have read their licence.txt -- have you?  The
 licence.txt is in simple English (not leaglease) -- it allows
 distribution of the firmware.

 > Hence it can't be in Fedora.

 My original question was why use the indirect approach of
 fwcutter rather than the direct approach of using the stuff
 provided by Broadcom.  The question was _not_ about why
 Broadcom's firmware is not distributed in Fedora.

 I think the reason why Broadcom's firmware is not in Fedora is
 because Broadcom does not provide (VHDL, Verilog or whatever)
 source code for the firmware, and Fedora.org wants source code
 for everything in it distributes.
   
 > They don't typically seem to enforce that, as router distros
 > have been doing that for a long time. But that doesn't mean
 > that it is right or wise to do so.
 > 
 > Fedora will include firmware that is freely redistributable
 > (even if it is restricted to being unmodified) in order to
 > have functional hardware support.


-- 
users mailing list
users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines

[Index of Archives]     [Older Fedora Users]     [Fedora Announce]     [Fedora Package Announce]     [EPEL Announce]     [EPEL Devel]     [Fedora Magazine]     [Fedora Summer Coding]     [Fedora Laptop]     [Fedora Cloud]     [Fedora Advisory Board]     [Fedora Education]     [Fedora Security]     [Fedora Scitech]     [Fedora Robotics]     [Fedora Infrastructure]     [Fedora Websites]     [Anaconda Devel]     [Fedora Devel Java]     [Fedora Desktop]     [Fedora Fonts]     [Fedora Marketing]     [Fedora Management Tools]     [Fedora Mentors]     [Fedora Package Review]     [Fedora R Devel]     [Fedora PHP Devel]     [Kickstart]     [Fedora Music]     [Fedora Packaging]     [Fedora SELinux]     [Fedora Legal]     [Fedora Kernel]     [Fedora OCaml]     [Coolkey]     [Virtualization Tools]     [ET Management Tools]     [Yum Users]     [Yosemite News]     [Gnome Users]     [KDE Users]     [Fedora Art]     [Fedora Docs]     [Fedora Sparc]     [Libvirt Users]     [Fedora ARM]

  Powered by Linux