On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 09:41:26AM -0400, Al Dunsmuir wrote: > On Saturday, July 14, 2012, 7:25:15 PM, Eric Smith wrote: > > > Perhaps it means that the file can't be in a supported executable format > > such as ELF? Downloaded firmware often is in raw binary format, but > > it's certainly conceivable that some might be in ELF format. > > This topic has come up at regular intervals in the past, > especially when the kernel interfaces for downloading firmware were > being developed. > > The packaging statement is meant to clarify, and to be read literally. > It means that the program is not a stand-alone program for use by > the host computer. It requires additional hardware to operate. It > is marked non-executable "-x" to prevent attempts to execute by the > host computer (or for the security conscious, attempts to disguise > malware as firmware). > > Normally firmware is a binary blob that is downloaded by the kernel to > that hardware, and used in some manner by that hardware, It may be > a program (code/data) executed by a CPU (or equivalent such as an > ASIC) or some form of data required for execution of that hardware. > It may be multiple of each, in a fancy wrapper scheme with CRCs. > > Delivering firmware via a standard kernel API was a big change a few > years ago. It allowed standard packaging of firmware, and eliminated > the need for users to do nasty things like use programs the cut the > firmware images out of Windows PE executables downloaded from chip/card > vendor websites. > > The encoding doesn't matter - what matters is that the content is > automatically delivered to the hardware so that hardware can operate. > > What also matters is that the licence allow Fedora to freely distribute > the firmware file, without silly restrictions such as "non-commercial use > only". > > Some folks object to Fedora shipping binary blobs, and insist that the > only true way is to ship everything with source and build tools. That > has been debated fiercely in the past... and the current rules were the > IMO reasonable compromise that resulted. > This seems to capture the spirit of what the Guidelines for binary firmware try to do. If anyone has wording that they think can make this more clear, feel free to submit it as a draft to the FPC at https://fedorahosted.org/fpc/newticket -Toshio
Attachment:
pgpklyIcBndmq.pgp
Description: PGP signature
-- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
