On Thursday 18 March 2010 22:38:17 Larry Finger wrote: > On 03/18/2010 02:31 PM, Michael Buesch wrote: > > On Thursday 18 March 2010 18:46:35 Larry Finger wrote: > >> (1) Modify b43-fwcutter to take data from an existing SPROM, > > > > Why not extend the ssb-sprom tool? I don't think this has anything to do with > > firmware, except that we (ab)use the firmware loading mechanism of the kernel > > for loading the blob into the kernel. > > It has nothing to do with firmware, but the existing fwcutter has all the parts > to generate files in the firmware directory, Everything needed to "generate a file in the firmware directory" are the open() write() and close() syscalls. > > > >> I have chosen to implement this in > >> fwcutter rather than ssb_sprom because the ordinary user will not have access to > >> ssb_sprom; > > > > Huh? ssb-sprom is GPL software. I have no problem relicensing it under BSD or > > even something more liberal. I don't see a problem for "ordinary users" here. > > It has nothing to do with the license. My distro, openSUSE, packages fwcutter > along with a script that uses wget to download the Broadcom drivers and extract > firmware for both b43 and b43legacy. The average user only has to execute that > script. Of course, the package could include both fwcutter and ssb_sprom > programs, but that would make a bigger change to the openSUSE package than just > a patch to fwcutter. I suspect that other distros use similar packages. > > > Well, but that version won't do anything on the SPROM, too. > > Yes, but if fwcutter were modified, it could write the virtual SPROM file. I think it really is abuse of fwcutter. What if you don't want any proprietary firmware at all, but still want an SPROM image? What about distros that do _not_ automatically use fwcutter to put proprietary fw in place for legal reasons? (Which most likely is the majority of distributions). Why create yet another dependency on fwcutter. I thought the long term plan was to get rid of proprietary firmware and fwcutter? Is it really such a big deal for a distribution to include yet another tiny opensource package? If that really is a problem for a distribution, they should just completely stop doing their distro. -- Greetings, Michael. -- 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
