Chris Adams wrote:
Is there any possibility of shipping the things that are legal and do
work across platforms: firmware? For example, I have an Intel wireless
card that uses the ipw2200 driver and firmware. I know there was
discussion from (IIRC) OpenBSD with various vendors about the licenses
for firmware distribution; did any of that go anywhere?
Yes, Some licensing changes are expected. Red Hat is still working with
Intel on this last I heard.
What is the Fedora Project's stand on firmware distribution?
The current stand is documented in
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/Guidelines#BinaryFirmware. In
short we require unrestricted redistribution rights on the minimum.
There is also http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FreeSoftwareAnalysis.
Could there at least be a pointer included somewhere for where to get
firmware?
Sure but even better see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217350. In some
cases, the licenses are unclear and need to go through a formal legal
review too as with other packages.
Unlike some other additional software, it is legal to
distribute the Intel firmware for example (at least the way I read the
license). Maybe there could be a "non-free" that includes software that
is legal but under more restrictive licenses (there aren't many things
that fall in that category).
We arent planning to introduce any non-free repositories within the
distribution. If they are legal but non-free repositories out there we
might consider pointing to them with appropriate disclaimers however.
Rahul
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