Re: [gNewSense-users] KFV: Detecting sourceless firmware

[Karl Goetz]

On Fri, 2008-04-11 at 11:15 +0300, Markus Laire wrote:
> Karl Goetz wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-04-11 at 09:03 +0300, Markus Laire wrote:
> >> It seems that the current way of doing KFV-work by checking only the 
> >> license often leaves sourceless firmware marked as "free".
> >>
> >> Since there are only "few" files which have firmware compared to all 
> >> files whose license needs to be checked, it might be best to just 
> >> continue this way, and when licenses of all files have been checked, to 
> >> separately detect files which contain firmware and then check whether 
> >> they are sourceless or not.
> > 
> > I disagree.
> > sourceless firmware being marked free is usually a mistake of someone
> > not checking the licence completely - they see "GPL" and move on.
> > 
> > Although it wont hurt to recheck firmware at the end, i dont think it
> > should be deliberately left out now.
> 
> There are also cases like
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/Ubuntu-hardy-linux-2-6-24-12-22--drivers--media--dvb--ttpci--av7110-hw-c
> where the license itself is normal "GPLv2 or later" and as such 
> completely free. Only by checking the whole file and not only the 
> license can one see that it contains firmware for which we don't have 
> source, and so the file is undistributable.

These things will happen - hopefully automated firmware checks, and
cross checking with other people will help us find these.

> 
> What I meant was that person checking the licenses could mark the file 
> as "free" if the license is free, even if the file might contain 
> sourceless firmware which would make it undistributable.
> 
> Because detecting firmware should IMO be done by a script and not 
> manually. (Doing it manually would IMO waste too much time.)

This is the script currently used:
http://svn.gnewsense.svnhopper.net/gnewsense/builder/trunk/firmware/find-firmware
(check its directory for other $stuff)
kk

> 
-- 
Karl Goetz <address@hidden>

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