On Wed, Jun 11, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Pavel Roskin <proski@xxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, 2008-06-11 at 20:47 +0200, Michael Buesch wrote: >> On Wednesday 11 June 2008 19:44:52 Tim Gardner wrote: >> > John, >> > >> > Here is the URL to Broadcom's web site advertising their open source >> > driver with support for the BCM4313. >> > >> > http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php >> > >> > rtg >> >> <quote> >> Make sure that you download the appropriate tar because the hybrid binary >> file must be of the appropriate architecture type. The hybrid binary file >> is agnostic to the specific version of the Linux kernel because it is >> designed to perform all interactions with the operating system through >> operating-system-specific files... >> </quote> > > Sure, they are trying to do the MadWifi thing, but it's too late since a > good free driver exists already, even if it doesn't support that > particular chip. I really don't understand why - they should do it the iwlwifi way. > > Still, the glue code and the headers are under GPL. It may be useful > for reverse engineering efforts. > > Perhaps the non-free object files could be used to extract firmware from > them. But the license won't allow distribution of that firmware, if I > understand correctly. > > What Broadcom could easily do is to release the firmware under a license > that would allow free distribution. This way, the firmware would be on > installation CDs of the popular distributions, and there would be no > need to install b43-fwcutter, get the firmware (that's a challenge in > absence of a wired network), extract the firmware and install it into > the right directory. That would make Broadcom cards make out-of-box, > and ultimately make them more popular. > > Instead, Broadcom tries to control the code its users are running. I > don't think it's going to work well. But to be fair to them, at least > they don't pretend that Linux doesn't exit. And that's quite an achievement... Anyway, what are the actual, working download links? The ones on the site just 404 out for me. > > -- > Regards, > Pavel Roskin > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in > the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- Vista: [V]iruses, [I]ntruders, [S]pyware, [T]rojans and [A]dware. :-) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
