[Prism54-devel] thank you!

[Luis R. Rodriguez]

Fabian,

On Mon, 12 Jan 2004, Fabian Fagerholm wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 21:24, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > I'd also just like to remind everyone that we've had good corporate
> > support. So far, you should also be thankful to:
> >
> > * Intersil (now Conexant/Globespanvirata): providing the original
> > GPL Source
>
> Speaking of which... Are there any remaining copyright issues with the
> drivers or any files provided by companies?
>

Only the firmware. If you're wondering what we did about the two include
files:

We found out that you should be OK with re-writing header files if all
they are, are just structs, function definitions. Why? Well why would you
be able to copyright just that? That is why you get many APIs being
re-written.

So, only the firmware is binary-only and the license for the firmware is
implied that its the one you get from your card's manufacturer's.
For now we're just providing the firmware in our project site to make
things easier for you. We'd stop if told so by Globespanvirata though.

I doubt we'll ever have a  GPL firmware, and if you have problems with
using proprietary firmware perhaps my "Firmware Free Software Philosophy
plugin by mcgrof" comment in :
http://prism54.org/firmware/
might help (comments are welcome).

There are some other linux kernel drivers which use proprietary  firmware
so we still have a shot at making it to the Linux Kernel tree.

	Luis