Adding linux-firmware people to Cc, since presumably they don't necessarily read linux-wireless... > Johannes, from that perspective, who are the "redistributors"? > Specifically, is linux-firmware git repository considered a > redistributor or its just hosting files? I mean, at what moment > someone else other then Quantenna will start to be legally obliged to > make GPL code used in firmware available for others? Look, I don't know. I'd assume people who ship it, like any regular distro, would be (re)distributors thereof. "Normal" (non-GPL) firmware images come with a redistribution license, but that obviously can't work here. There's some info from Ben here regarding the carl9170 case: http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1605.3/01176.html > Personally I still hope that linux-firmware itself is not legally > concerned with what is the content of firmware its hosting, but looks > like there already was a precedent case with carl9170 driver and > we have to somehow deal with it. That's really all I wanted to bring up. I'm not involved with the linux-firmware git tree. > There still may be a difference though: Quantenna is semiconductor > company only, software > used on actual products based on Quantenna chipsets is released by > other > companies. > I just want to present our legal team with a clear case (and position > of > Linux maintainers) so that they can > work with it and make decision on how to proceed. > > From technical perspective, as I mentioned, SDK is quite huge and > include a lot of opensource > components including full Linux, I don't think its reasonable to have > it > inside linux-firmware tree. > What are the options to share it other then providing it on request > basis: > - git repository > - store tarball somewhere on official website Clearly that wasn't deemed appropriate for carl9170, so I don't see why it'd be different here. johannes
