Re: [RFC] qtn: add FullMAC firmware for Quantenna QSR10G wifi device

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

Adding linux-firmware people to Cc, since presumably they don't
necessarily read linux-wireless...

> Johannes, from that perspective, who are the "redistributors"? 

> Specifically, is linux-firmware git repository considered a
> redistributor or its just hosting files? I mean, at what moment
> someone else other then Quantenna will start to be legally obliged to
> make GPL code used in firmware available for others?

Look, I don't know. I'd assume people who ship it, like any regular
distro, would be (re)distributors thereof. "Normal" (non-GPL) firmware
images come with a redistribution license, but that obviously can't
work here.

There's some info from Ben here regarding the carl9170 case:
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1605.3/01176.html

> Personally I still hope that linux-firmware itself is not legally 
> concerned with what is the content of firmware its hosting, but looks
> like there already was a precedent case  with carl9170 driver and
> we have to somehow deal with it.

That's really all I wanted to bring up. I'm not involved with the
linux-firmware git tree.

> There still may be a difference though: Quantenna is semiconductor 
> company only, software
> used on actual products based on Quantenna chipsets is released by
> other 
> companies.
> I just want to present our legal team with a clear case (and position
> of 
> Linux maintainers) so that they can
> work with it and make decision on how to proceed.
> 
>  From technical perspective, as I mentioned, SDK is quite huge and 
> include a lot of opensource
> components including full Linux, I don't think its reasonable to have
> it 
> inside linux-firmware tree.
> What are the options to share it other then providing it on request
> basis:
> - git repository
> - store tarball somewhere on official website

Clearly that wasn't deemed appropriate for carl9170, so I don't see why
it'd be different here.

johannes