The kernel and binary firmware

Posted Apr 7, 2005 21:29 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
Parent article: The kernel and binary firmware

If I read the message correctly, the start of the whole thread was that, while it's fine to distribute the blobs with the kernel (as "non-GPL stuff merely aggregated with GPL stuff"), it's wrong to claim implicitly that they are under the GPL, when they are covered by a different license (and distribution as-is wouldn't be permitted under the GPL. The tg3 driver didn't say anything on the subject, and so the initial request was to put a notice in the file that the binary firmware was not, in fact, under the GPL, but was a separate program and not, strictly speaking, part of the kernel at all. The discussion then diverged into solutions to the larger issue.