Marc Wiriadisastra wrote:
On Fri, 2007-12-28 at 15:55 +0300, John Babich wrote:
On Dec 28, 2007 6:22 AM, Marc Wiriadisastra <marc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<snip>
Just a quick update on the wifi guide and all of that.
I'm looking to put a list of cards that are supported however
I don't know which cards are supported.
I've contacted Bill and he replied to contact John Linville
which I have done but I'm assuming he's out of the
office/holidays and I'm waiting for that list. I'm assuming
next week he'll be back or the week after so I will update that
page when I get the confirmed information.
The other thing that I'm wondering about is whether we should
provide a guide on how to use the b43-cutter program? The cutter
program is supported but the drivers are proprietary therefore
in order to provide a guide I would have to point them to the
proprietary websites.
As you may know,. wifi connectivity is getting better, with more
unencumbered wifi drivers. At the same time, there are some
manufacturers, such as Boardcom, who won't release open-sourced
drivers and no one has yet reverse-engineered one.
There are two ways to use proprietary Windows drivers with Linux:
ndiswrapper and b43-cutter. Both require the use of encumbered
binaries
It is no secret that the Fedora Project does not condone the use of
encumbered binaries, as this is against the spirit and practice of
promoting FOSS software and practices. Official Fedora docs should not
contain directions on how to do this. Of course, the tools are there
and there's always the repository-which-must-not-be-named. This
repository exists because there are countries in the world where the
laws are different. However, Red Hat, incorporated in the US, is
subject to US laws.
This is both for well-documented legal and practical reasons at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ForbiddenItems.
Of course, codeina is another story, even if controversial. It's
already documented at
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Multimedia/Codeina. We may want to link
to this page or incorporate it directly into the DUG.
Would love some feedback on that last issue.
You just got it :-)
Best Regards,
John Babich
Volunteer, Fedora Project
No disagreements with what you have said my question relates to the fact
that b43-cutter is shipped with Fedora itself. I would only be pointing
out what is already in the readme and what is given with the package
itself which Fedora ships.
Thats why I'm confused by the situation since Fedora ships b43-cutter
which has as it's sole purpose the steps for installing proprietary or
closed source software.
Firmware, not software and we do have a exception for shipping firmware
as long as they are redistributable. As long as the software itself is
Free and open source, there is no judging it by what it is going to be
used for. Wine for example, falls under the same class.
Rahul
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