On Sun, 2008-07-06 at 10:29 -0400, Devin Heitmueller wrote: > Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this also affect those > distributions that consider kernels with binary firmware blobs to not > be free software? Those distributions take the stance that the > firmware must be loadable by userland, in which case the proposed > patch removes this capability. No, it doesn't remove that capability. We're just observing that the trick which fdump.c uses to turn firmware into a hex array in C source is obsoleted by the generic ability to include firmware blobs into the kernel using CONFIG_EXTRA_FIRMWARE. If we just use the generic method, then the conditional code in the driver can go away, as can the fdump tool. Yes, that does mean that it's either in the _kernel_ or in userspace, rather than being in the .ko file -- but if you want modularity and are already depending on having a functional userspace, it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to have this reimplementation of generic functionality, just so that you can keep the two parts in _one_ file. -- dwmw2 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
