This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 12:58 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)
In reply to: This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state by hifi
Parent article: This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

> My personal belief is that hardware shouldn't be treated any differently if a firmware is uploaded as a binary file compared to being burned to a physical ROM on the board.

For the hardware, it doesn't make a difference, but in the firmware upload case, your distribution is distributing non-free software, while in the ROM case, your distribution isn't distributing anything (since you already have it).

Ideological reasons aside, this means that in the firmware upload case, the distribution has to worry about the license for the firmware files.

This is why I drink: a discussion of Fedora's legal state

Posted Feb 16, 2017 16:49 UTC (Thu) by hifi (guest, #109741) [Link]

Hasn't this been solved already for the firmware that has been included with the kernel? Those blobs should have redistribution rights for this very purpose.

I'm not arguing we should start packaging extracted firmware without consent from hardware vendors but when we do have that it should be a no-brainer to include them within distributions.