Re: [PATCH net-next 1/4] net: phy: marvell10g: Support firmware loading on 88X3310

[Tobias Waldekranz <tobias@waldekranz.com>]

On tis, dec 19, 2023 at 11:49, Marek Behún <kabel@kernel.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Dec 2023 11:15:41 +0100
> Tobias Waldekranz <tobias@waldekranz.com> wrote:
>
>> On tis, dec 19, 2023 at 10:22, Marek Behún <kabel@kernel.org> wrote:
>> > On Thu, 14 Dec 2023 21:14:39 +0100
>> > Tobias Waldekranz <tobias@waldekranz.com> wrote:
>> >  
>> >> +MODULE_FIRMWARE("mrvl/x3310fw.hdr");  
>> >
>> > And do you have permission to publish this firmware into linux-firmware?  
>> 
>> No, I do not.
>> 
>> > Because when we tried this with Marvell, their lawyer guy said we can't
>> > do that...  
>> 
>> I don't even have good enough access to ask the question, much less get
>> rejected by Marvell :) I just used that path so that it would line up
>> with linux-firmware if Marvell was to publish it in the future.
>
> Yeah, it was pretty stupid in my opinion. The lawyer guy's reasoning
> was that to download the firmware from Marvell's Customer Portal you
> have to agree with Terms & Conditions, so it can't be distributed to
> people who did not agree to Terms & Conditions. We told him that anyone
> can get access to the firmware without agreeing anyway, since they can
> just read the SPI NOR module connected to the PHY if we burn the
> firmware in manufacture...

Yeah, they are needlessly secretive in lots of ways - much to their own
detriment, IMO. They also protect their functional specs as if you could
just run them through `pdf2rtl`, email the output to TSMC, and have your
own 7nm ASIC in the mail the following week.