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

[Christian Lamparter <chunkeey@googlemail.com>]

On Friday, December 23, 2016 6:12:35 PM CET igor.mitsyanko.os@quantenna.com wrote:
> From: Igor Mitsyanko <imitsyanko@quantenna.com>
> 
> QSR10G is Quantenna's 8x8, 160M, 11ac WiFi card.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Kamlesh Rath <krath@quantenna.com>
> Signed-off-by: Sergey Matyukevich <smatyukevich@quantenna.com>
> Signed-off-by: Avinash Patil <avinashp@quantenna.com>
> Signed-off-by: Igor Mitsyanko <igor.mitsyanko.os@quantenna.com>
> ---
> This is an RFC patch that we sent to linux-wireless mailing list a while ago,
> and it spawned a discussion regarding whether GPL sources has to be submitted
> together with this firmware. We would like to clarify with linux-firmware maintainers
> to understnad what should be our actions to allow this to be accepted.
> - firmware contains GPL components;
> - LICENCE file states that sources for GPL components will be provided on request
> to oslegal@quantenna.com
> 
> There was an opinion that it is not enough: precedent case like this with carl9170
> firmware was resolved by submitting GPL sources into linux-firmware repository
> itself.
The ar9170-usb firmware was released as GPL v2.0 from the get-go.
<http://git.sipsolutions.net/ar9170-fw.git/commit/GPL?id=2e3574ce10c74a82047a06b046855de14d969948>

And this was never a problem. What is THE PROBLEM though:
"if all the patches from ar9170fw to carl9170fw and beyond (i.e new versions)
have to be added to linux-firmware.git." Or not.

That's why there was never a update to the carl9170fw.
So be prepared for this scenario too.

> Does the same applies to qsr10g firmware?
>
> The SDK that we use to build it is quite heavy (> 100MB, but with toolchain). 
> Maybe we can take another approach to place SDK separately on Quantenna website
> (as a compressed archive), and add a link in linux-firmware?
Yes, I would like to know this as well.

Regards,
Christian