[Debian-eeepc-devel] Bug#497200: ITP: rt2860-source -- source for RT2860 wireless adapter kernel module

[Phil Endecott]

Damyan Ivanov wrote:
> There may be some licensing problems and this is why I CC debian-legal.
> All the sources are licensed under GPL-2+, except one file,
> include/firmware.h, which is generated from a binary blob and contains
> the following notice:

[snip]

Looks bad to me.

> I did not yet check if this code is actually linked in the GPL-2+
> module, but have a bad feeling it it does. Would a compiled GPL source,
> including firmware.h be even distributable?
>
> Perhaps the module can be changed to load its firmware from external
> file or even not need that nasty firmware.h (there are traces of
> support to other hardware and that firmware may be for them).

There's some code in common/rtmp_init.c that's inside #ifdef 
BIN_IN_FILE that tries to get the firmware from a file, and falls back 
to the contents of firmware.h.  BIN_IN_FILE is not defined, and so it 
unconditionally uses firmware.h.  I have had a quick try at enabling 
BIN_IN_FILE, and defining RTMP_FIRMWARE_FILE_NAME to point to 
common/rt2860.bin, and according to the debug output it worked.  I 
can't be certain though, as it still has firmware.h compiled in as a 
fallback and unless you power-cycle you can't be sure that the previous 
download has been lost.

Someone keen could probably convert it to use the proper kernel 
firmware loading infrastructure.  The code that does this seems to be 
quite localised in common/rtmp_init.c.


Phil.