[Fedora-legal-list] Update to Binary Firmware Exceptions

[Tom Callaway]

On 10/24/2012 06:30 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:

> I don't want to sound too alarmist, but these laser-focused changes
> aimed at the Pi seem slightly worrying to me in the context of:
> 
> http://airlied.livejournal.com/76383.html
> 
> If the firmware is as useless and anti-F/OSS as Dave suggests, do we
> really want to be letting it in? Should we be drawing a distinction
> between the two kinds of firmware Dave identifies in his blog post?

The firmware for the raspberrypi is necessary to boot anything on the
device. This is different from the videocore libs that were previously
proprietary but are now BSD. The videocore libs are kindof awful in all
the ways that David Airlie covers, but you can run Fedora on the
Raspberry Pi without them. You cannot even boot Fedora on the raspberry
pi without the firmware present on the SD card (and thus, part of the
"Fedora" image that we would distribute for that platform).

At no point was I trying to extend the guidelines to support including
the proprietary videocore libs.

~tom

==
Fedora Project