Hello, for some time I have been interested in situation of firmware for Linux drivers. I found something interesting. Some time ago I found that Agree firmware for orinoco driver was submitted to linux-firmware tree. From driver documentation (http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/orinoco) I found that orinoco driver also works with Symbol "Spectrum24" chipset. The documentation states that firmware for that chipset is only available by cutting it from Windows or Apple drivers (like Broadcom microcode). Fortunately I found that it is not true. The firmware binary blobs for Spectrum24 can be found on NetBSD and OpenBSD servers under BSD license. Both have build in this firmware in their operating systems. This statement can be found in OpenBSD CVS: from netbsd: Generated from the firmware binaries for T3 series CF adapter. Obtained from Tim Gardner <timg@xxxxxxx> who developed the Linux driver. And approved by Brad Lefore <blefore@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> to redistribute it with BSD license. (http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/microcode/symbol/esecsym?sortby=rev) This means that the only difference between firmware that Linux uses and the *BSD firmware is that BSD people successfully negotiated license change to BSD. Theoretically by simple drag and dropping the files from OpenBSD/NetBSD to linux-firmware tree and renaming the files will allow Linux users out of the box support of Symbol cards without any firmware extraction tools. Just in case, contacting Mr. Lefore of Symbol first would be also recommended. I hope this information will be helpful for orinoco driver development. OpenBSD resources: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/microcode/symbol/?sortby=rev#dirlist and licence: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/microcode/symbol/symbol-license?rev=1.4;content-type=text%2Fplain;sortby=rev NetBSD resources: http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/microcode/wi/?only_with_tag=MAIN -- 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
