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Home > Archive > Debian Developers > March 2004 > Bug#239952: kernel-source-2.6.4: qla2xxx contains non-free firmware
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Bug#239952: kernel-source-2.6.4: qla2xxx contains non-free firmware
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| Matthew Garrett 2004-03-25, 7:39 am |
| Herbert Xu wrote:
(Debian-boot - context becomes clearer further down)
>I would like the opinion of all Debian developers on the general issue
>of firmware in the kernel-source package.
I'd certainly think that it's dubious. Alan Cox has expressed much the
same opinion and holds enough of the copyright that it probably ought to
matter.
>I recall that when this issue was first raised with the keyspan drivers,
>some of the people advocating their removal promised to modify the
>drivers so that the firmware could be loaded from userspace (just like how
>the anti-non-free camp promised to host non-free packages), it appears
>that after three years this support still has not materialised.
The request_firmware interface allows drivers to generate hotplug events
when they need to load firmware. Patching individual drivers shouldn't
be an excessive quantity of pain and would probably be welcomed
upstream.
>Perhaps the easiest solution is to move all kernel packages into non-free.
There are two issues. One is that the firmware doesn't meet the DFSG,
and that would support it being placed in non-Free (personally, I'm
rather less down on firmware than I am on any other sort of non-free
data. We only need to ship it because the vendor hasn't put it in ROM,
and if they had done we wouldn't be worrying about it at all), and the
other is that it's probably against the terms of the GPL to distribute
it linked into the kernel at all. If the firmware remains inside the
kernel, there's a fairly strong argument that we can't distribute the
kernel at all.
Which leaves us with the problem of the installer. Personally, I'd
rather firmware wasn't in main. On the other hand, we're talking about
SCSI cards and network adapters being affected here, which is massively
less than ideal. I think I'd have no objection to firmware being
included in the installer, but this would possibly require the existence
of another section. From an implementation point of view, I guess all
that would be required would be the presence of hotplug during the
install and a few firmware udebs.
At this point of the release cycle, it's certainly not practical to try
to punt firmware out to non-free. Since we've failed to make any sort of
real stand against stuff like the GFDL for Sarge, I guess allowing a
small quantity of stuff that doesn't come with source isn't massively
worse. Along with the GFDL, it's something that should really be sorted
for Sarge+1.
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| Giacomo A. Catenazzi 2004-03-25, 12:37 pm |
|
Matthew Garrett wrote:
>
>
> There are two issues. One is that the firmware doesn't meet the DFSG,
(...)
Upstreams expressed intention to remove all firmware from kernel.
The infrastructure IMHO is not yet completly ready (the two stabe boot),
but if you talk to LKML, probably we will have a better opinion and
an incentive to people to continue the work on the new kernel
initialitation part.
Second solution:
kernel maintainer download the original kernel sources and
remove the conflicting files. Than it publish the debian
modified sources with the packages, until the kernels don't
contain offending files.
ciao
cate
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| Marco d'Itri 2004-03-25, 6:38 pm |
| On Mar 25, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@pixelized.ch> wrote:
> Second solution:
> kernel maintainer download the original kernel sources and
> remove the conflicting files. Than it publish the debian
> modified sources with the packages, until the kernels don't
> contain offending files.
And more and more users will just ignore the official kernel package,
because it will not support modern hardware.
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Marco | [5351 acE9woWCJyVD2]
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| Andrew Suffield 2004-03-25, 7:34 pm |
| On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 10:30:26PM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 25, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@pixelized.ch> wrote:
>
> And more and more users will just ignore the official kernel package,
> because it will not support modern hardware.
Yeah, just like more and more people will ignore Debian because it
will not support modern win32 programs.
Bullshit, and who cares anyway?
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| Marco d'Itri 2004-03-26, 11:20 am |
| On Mar 26, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> Yeah, just like more and more people will ignore Debian because it
> will not support modern win32 programs.
We have built an OS which can replace win32 programs.
We cannot do the same thing for hardware.
> Bullshit, and who cares anyway?
I do, and I think our users do as well.
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ciao, |
Marco | [5367 siV9ExeZayg9k]
| |
| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-26, 3:35 pm |
| Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 25, "Giacomo A. Catenazzi" <cate@pixelized.ch> wrote:
>
> And more and more users will just ignore the official kernel package,
> because it will not support modern hardware.
Noooo... all the brand-new hardware on my newest machine is supported
without firmware updates.
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| Andrew Suffield 2004-03-26, 6:36 pm |
| On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 09:58:38AM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 26, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
>
> We have built an OS which can replace win32 programs.
> We cannot do the same thing for hardware.
We can, actually. There's a few groups doing things along those
lines. But that's besides the point.
There is no shortage of "modern" hardware without these problems. I
don't own any hardware with these problems. It's not like users don't
have a choice in the matter. Your argument is equivalent to "I bought
a winmodem so Debian should ship Windows".
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| Christoph Hellwig 2004-03-26, 6:36 pm |
| On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 02:50:15PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Noooo... all the brand-new hardware on my newest machine is supported
> without firmware updates.
Really? You'd be surprised how much hardware requires firmware updates
to work. What hardware do you have in that box?
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| Marco d'Itri 2004-03-26, 6:37 pm |
| On Mar 26, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
> There is no shortage of "modern" hardware without these problems. I
Yes, there is for some categories of hardware: all USB DSL modems,
many (all?) recent DVB-S cards, many recent and very common wifi network
cards.
You may not /need/ this kind of hardware, but other people do.
> don't own any hardware with these problems. It's not like users don't
> have a choice in the matter. Your argument is equivalent to "I bought
> a winmodem so Debian should ship Windows".
It's obviously not, as all the hardware I'm discussing has proper free
linux drivers.
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ciao, |
Marco | [5380 unYjdMP14r.AY]
| |
| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-27, 4:34 pm |
| Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 02:50:15PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
>
> Really? You'd be surprised how much hardware requires firmware updates
> to work. What hardware do you have in that box?
Pentium IV, e1000 ethernet card, ICH5 PCI bus/SATA, SATA and IDE hard
drives, USB bus, IDE CD-RW, IDE DVD-ROM, Radeon video card, LCD monitor.
I could be wrong, but I don't see any firmware updates in any of those
drivers; if there are any, they certainly aren't binary blobs.
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| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-27, 4:34 pm |
| Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 02:50:15PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
>
> Really? You'd be surprised how much hardware requires firmware updates
> to work. What hardware do you have in that box?
.... and just to follow up ;-), I got an Adaptec AIC7xxx SCSI card for that
machine. And that changed things -- the AIC7xxx *does* have firmware
updates -- *free* firmware updates with source code *and* even source code
for the assembler. So it would stay in "main"!
I also forgot the sound card, a cs46xx (also appears to have no non-free
firmware updates). And the Intel hardware random number generator
(likewise). And the PS/2 keyboard and mouse.
Other systems in the house have 3c590 ethernet cards (again, no non-free
firmware update I can find), emu10k1 sound cards (this has some binary
blobs, but they appear to be basically legitimate mapping tables), AHA1740
and Advansys SCSI cards (again, no non-free firmware updates).
So I can honestly say that if all the binary-only firmware was removed from
the official kernel package, I wouldn't lose support for a single piece of
hardware.
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| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-27, 4:34 pm |
| Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> * Andrew Suffield
>
> | There is no shortage of "modern" hardware without these problems.
>
> For some classses of hardware, there is. I challenge you to find a
> ADSL card which supports Annex.B and has free drivers. In fact, if
> you find me one of those (and it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg),
> I'll buy you a case of beer.
There used to be the same problem with accelerated SVGA cards (back in the
distant past). Shall we then include the NVIDIA drivers in "main"? In
fact, this is a routine problem with new classes of hardware. Does it
justify deliberately breaking the Social Contract?
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| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-27, 4:34 pm |
| Marco d'Itri wrote:
> On Mar 26, Andrew Suffield <asuffield@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Yes, there is for some categories of hardware: all USB DSL modems,
> many (all?) recent DVB-S cards, many recent and very common wifi network
> cards.
> You may not /need/ this kind of hardware, but other people do.
Debian's job is not "to support all possible hardware, with non-free
software if necessary, by claiming that that software is free". Or is it,
and have I misread the Social Contract? :-)
> It's obviously not, as all the hardware I'm discussing has proper free
> linux drivers.
The point is that it doesn't work without the non-free software, in this
case the firmware; just as the WinModems don't work without non-free
software. It's really a very comparable case.
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| Christoph Hellwig 2004-03-28, 5:34 am |
| On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 03:47:32PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> Christoph Hellwig wrote:
>
>
> Pentium IV,
depending on the hardware revision you'll need to load new microcode for
it to work reliably. If you're lucky the bios does that for you, if not
you need the linux microcode driver to load one.
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| Nathanael Nerode 2004-03-29, 3:34 am |
| -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Christoph Hellwig wrote:
| On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 03:47:32PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
|
|>Christoph Hellwig wrote:
|>
|>
|>>On Fri, Mar 26, 2004 at 02:50:15PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
|>>
|>>>>And more and more users will just ignore the official kernel package,
|>>>>because it will not support modern hardware.
|>>>
|>>>Noooo... all the brand-new hardware on my newest machine is supported
|>>>without firmware updates.
|>>
|>>Really? You'd be surprised how much hardware requires firmware updates
|>>to work. What hardware do you have in that box?
|>
|>Pentium IV,
|
|
| depending on the hardware revision you'll need to load new microcode for
| it to work reliably. If you're lucky the bios does that for you, if not
| you need the linux microcode driver to load one.
Well, either the BIOS does it, or I have a lucky hardware revision. :shrug:
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