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Quote of the week: Free kernel driversQuote of the week: Free kernel driversPosted Nov 2, 2005 3:50 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)In reply to: Quote of the week: Free kernel drivers by Duncan Parent article: Quote of the week
There's another type of non-GPL binary blob in the kernel and that's firmware. I don't see how it can be argued that the firmware is a derivative of the kernel unless it was specifically designed to interface with it, like through a GPLed driver. I believe that most instances of binary firmwares they are identical to the ones loaded in Windows and even ones on ROMs on older versions of the hardware.
Now I guess it could still be a GPL violation to distribute the merged work, if you can consider it a single work, but it would be one without the binary being a derivative of something else.
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Kernel vs Debian Posted Nov 3, 2005 20:57 UTC (Thu) by Luyseyal (guest, #15693) [Link] Which is why it's fine if the kernel has firmware included with it, but Debian can't distribute it as part of main... 'cause that has to do with Debian's social policy, not the GPL.
-l
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