Re: Packaging FPGA bitstreams
On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 02:19:49AM -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 10:54 PM, Solomon Peachy
<pizza(a)shaftnet.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 10:19:07PM -0400, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
>> Still not reasonable for Fedora, I think. Red Hat, and RHEL, can
>> manage registered licensing to build this binary blob. But binary
>> blobs with no tool chain to build htem?
>
> So it's okay to ship opaque-but-redistributable binary blobs that don't
> run on the host CPU (aka device firmware) without any source code (much
> less a toolchain that can build it), but shipping something that comes
> with fully redistributable (if not outright Free) source code is bad
> because there's no Free toolchain to compile it? That doesn't make
> sense.
>
> I'm just trying to understand how FPGA "firmware" is any different
than
> regular device firmware, and how having source code code available
> suddenly turns something from okay to include into something we can't.
>
> - Solomon
I detest both. Rechecking the published standard at
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware, it
doesn't specifically list "must be compilable by Fedora developers
with Fedora tools", so you've a point.
It's still making me hold my nose and go "eewwww".
I think all involved really detest the situation and accept that it is
a horrible situation to be in. None the less, Fedora policy explicitly
allows opaque but redistributable firmware blobs. So unless someone wants
to push through a change to the policy I don't see a reason in Fedora policy
that would cause us to treat FPGA firmware differently from existing
firmware blobs we distribute.
Regards,
Daniel
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