Hi Ben, Kyle,
could you please share what is the position of linux-firmware regarding
firmware binaries that include GPL components? Does it require entire
GPL components codebase be present in linux-firmware tree, or maybe
having this clause in license file is enough:
+Open Source Software. The Software may include components that are licensed
+pursuant to open source software (“Open Source Components”). Information
+regarding the Open Source Components included with the Software is
available
+upon request to oslegal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. To the extent such Open Source
+Components are required to be licensed to you under the terms of a separate
+license (such as an open source license) then such other terms shall
apply, and
+nothing herein shall be deemed or interpreted to limit any rights you
may have
+under any such applicable license.
From technical perspective, size of the codebase used to build
Quantenna firmware is a few hundred MBs, it seems too much to include
into linux-firmware tree.
On 11/11/2016 02:35 PM, Johannes Berg wrote:
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
