kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Rahul Sundaram]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
>>> Not everyone agrees with your interpretation of the GPL, and plenty of
>>> people are happy to distribute binary blobs. 
>>
>> Just for the record -- this is the licence you speak of 'interpreting':
>>
>>     These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole.  If
>>     identifiable sections of that work are NOT DERIVED from the
>>      Program, and can be reasonably considered INDEPENDENT AND
>>     SEPARATE WORKS in themselves, then this License, and its terms,
>>     do not apply to those sections WHEN YOU DISTRIBUTE THEM AS
>>     SEPARATE WORKS.
>>
>>     But when you distribute the SAME SECTIONS AS PART OF A WHOLE
>>     which is a work based on the Program, the DISTRIBUTION OF THE
>>     WHOLE MUST BE ON THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, whose permissions
>>     for other licensees extend to the ENTIRE WHOLE, and thus to
>>     EACH AND EVERY PART REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE IT.
>>     Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or
>>     contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the
>>     intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of
>>     derivative OR COLLECTIVE WORKS based on the Program.
>> Personally, I can't find even a _wilful_ misinterpretation which permits
>> non-GPL'd firmware blobs to be included in the kernel itself, without
>> being completely crazy about it. But maybe that's just me.
> 
> Do you think the firmware provided by some other vendor is somehow 
> derived from or based on portion of the GPL'd kernel?
> 
> Do you think it is part of the kernel-as-a-whole when it loads/runs 
> completely separately on some other component? I don't see how you can 
> have any interpretation other than it being an unrelated chunk that is 
> conveniently aggregated with a loader to make a piece of hardware behave 
> better.  If you really believe firmware is a derivative of the kernel 
> you wouldn't be able to run linux on anything with firmware in ROM 
> either.  Loading it as the kernel loads doesn't make it any more or less 
> a part of the kernel work-as-a-whole.

Alexandre Oliva already said this is not a matter of licensing 
compatibility but just licensing (ie) the firmware inside the kernel 
doesn't have the equivalent source code. He hasn't claimed that firmware 
inside the kernel is a GPL violation.

Rahul