Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Karel Balej]

Hello,

Francesco Dolcini, 2025-11-28T18:05:37+01:00:
> Hello Karel,
>
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 04:29:12PM +0100, Karel Balej wrote:
>> To reiterate, the firmware is generally available but is not part of
>> linux-firmware and the entire process of upstreaming the chipset support is
>> stuck on that.
>
> I'll try to see if any of my contact in NXP Wi-Fi group is able to help. Give
> me a few days.

so I was in a long conversation over the past months with Jeff from NXP
who was very helpful and tried to arrange for the upstreaming of the
firmware. Unfortunately however, his efforts were ultimately rejected by
the internal management.

We were directed to try to reach out to NXP via the customer support
page which yielded nothing. The current situation is thus the same as a
few months ago, summarized in my quote above.

Brian, what are the options here now? Would it be possible to make an
exception and accept the patches without the firmware being in
linux-firmware? This is an old device with no mainstream audience so I
expect everyone who will want to use it will be able to supply the
firmware themselves and it would be great to not have to keep the
patches in a fork, especially when trying to build on top of them
further (such as to fix the driver-firmware incompatibilities discussed
in one of the patches of this series).

Francesco, would you perhaps still be able to help in any way?

Thank you, kind regards,
K. B.

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Francesco Dolcini]

Hello Karel,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 12:55:23PM +0200, Karel Balej wrote:
> without the firmware being in linux-firmware?

What's the license of this firmware? Am I wrong saying that if
the license allows it, you could just send a patch to have it integrated
to the linux-firmware repository? Is there any history or documentation
on the topic (please apologize if this is a well known topic, just
answer RTFM if this is the case).

I read a couple of days ago that for example the firmwares for the
various Apple arm64 laptop cannot be redistributed and every single
individual that wants to use those needs to extract those from their
system.

All of that seems just a legal matter, and IANAL ...

Francesco

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Karel Balej]

Hello, Francesco,

Francesco Dolcini, 2026-04-29T13:22:32+02:00:
> On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 12:55:23PM +0200, Karel Balej wrote:
>> without the firmware being in linux-firmware?
>
> What's the license of this firmware? Am I wrong saying that if
> the license allows it, you could just send a patch to have it integrated
> to the linux-firmware repository? Is there any history or documentation
> on the topic (please apologize if this is a well known topic, just
> answer RTFM if this is the case).

that's one of the issues, the license is not specified explicitly
anywhere as far as I know. Likely it is the same as the other Marvell
blobs already in linux-firmware (the mrvl directory), but we don't know
for sure.

As far as I know, even if I was to submit the firmware myself, it would
still require a sign-off from someone from NXP [1].

> I read a couple of days ago that for example the firmwares for the
> various Apple arm64 laptop cannot be redistributed and every single
> individual that wants to use those needs to extract those from their
> system.

Are those blobs loaded by the mainline kernel? If so, it would be the
same situation as I'm proposing here I believe.

> All of that seems just a legal matter, and IANAL ...

It is.

[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/about/#signed-off-by-requirement

Karel

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Francesco Dolcini]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 03:20:28PM +0200, Karel Balej wrote:
> Francesco Dolcini, 2026-04-29T13:22:32+02:00:
> > On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 12:55:23PM +0200, Karel Balej wrote:
> >> without the firmware being in linux-firmware?
> >
> > What's the license of this firmware? Am I wrong saying that if
> > the license allows it, you could just send a patch to have it integrated
> > to the linux-firmware repository? Is there any history or documentation
> > on the topic (please apologize if this is a well known topic, just
> > answer RTFM if this is the case).
> 
> that's one of the issues, the license is not specified explicitly
> anywhere as far as I know.
That's enough to be blocked.

> As far as I know, even if I was to submit the firmware myself, it would
> still require a sign-off from someone from NXP [1].

And this is clearly there to avoid situation that are problematic from
a legal point of view.

I do not see any way forward without NXP.

Francesco

> [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/about/#signed-off-by-requirement

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Karel Balej]

Francesco Dolcini, 2026-04-29T15:40:11+02:00:
> I do not see any way forward without NXP.

Probably not for the firmware, no. That's why I'm asking Brian if it
would be possible to get the kernel support in without it as in the
Apple case, or whether there are any other options.

Karel

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Brian Norris]

Hi,

On Wed, Apr 29, 2026 at 12:55:23PM +0200, Karel Balej wrote:
> Francesco Dolcini, 2025-11-28T18:05:37+01:00:
> > On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 04:29:12PM +0100, Karel Balej wrote:
> >> To reiterate, the firmware is generally available but is not part of
> >> linux-firmware and the entire process of upstreaming the chipset support is
> >> stuck on that.
> >
> > I'll try to see if any of my contact in NXP Wi-Fi group is able to help. Give
> > me a few days.
> 
> so I was in a long conversation over the past months with Jeff from NXP
> who was very helpful and tried to arrange for the upstreaming of the
> firmware. Unfortunately however, his efforts were ultimately rejected by
> the internal management.

:(

> We were directed to try to reach out to NXP via the customer support
> page which yielded nothing. The current situation is thus the same as a
> few months ago, summarized in my quote above.
> 
> Brian, what are the options here now? Would it be possible to make an
> exception and accept the patches without the firmware being in
> linux-firmware? This is an old device with no mainstream audience so I
> expect everyone who will want to use it will be able to supply the
> firmware themselves

I'm not really in the business of writing rules here nor their
exceptions. I was just pointing you at the existing rules, and how this
seemed to violate them. Since the websites have moved around a bit since
the last time, here's the page I referenced:

https://wireless.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches.html#new-driver

I suppose maybe those rules are there so that we don't get drivers with
*no* legally-usable firmware, since it's about "New Drivers". This is
not a New Driver, so maybe that part doesn't have to apply.

I suppose I'll leave it up to Johannes on this part, and may be willing
to retract my NAK [1].

> and it would be great to not have to keep the
> patches in a fork, especially when trying to build on top of them
> further (such as to fix the driver-firmware incompatibilities discussed
> in one of the patches of this series).

Patch 3 is a different story. At the moment, it's definitely not
acceptable. But I tried to provide hints about how you can write proper
FW compatibility logic. I'm still not optimistic that'll be easy and
maintainable, and we still reserve the right to reject patches if they
make things unmaintainable.

(Marvell clearly didn't do any real work here on maintaining good FW
compatibility.)

Brian

> Francesco, would you perhaps still be able to help in any way?
> 
> Thank you, kind regards,
> K. B.

[1] I think you're referring to this:
    https://lore.kernel.org/all/ZUQN4Ua8byy-Fsy8@google.com/
    Re: [PATCH 0/2] net: mwifiex: add support for the SD8777 chipset

Re: [DONOTAPPLY RFC PATCH v2 0/4] WiFi support for samsung,coreprimevelte

[Karel Balej]

Brian Norris, 2026-04-29T10:15:55-07:00:
>> and it would be great to not have to keep the
>> patches in a fork, especially when trying to build on top of them
>> further (such as to fix the driver-firmware incompatibilities discussed
>> in one of the patches of this series).
>
> Patch 3 is a different story. At the moment, it's definitely not
> acceptable. But I tried to provide hints about how you can write proper
> FW compatibility logic. I'm still not optimistic that'll be easy and
> maintainable, and we still reserve the right to reject patches if they
> make things unmaintainable.

I was referring to the original patches here, I would of course modify
the compability patch according to your feedback, I just didn't want to
invest the effort into that when it wasn't and still isn't clear if it
will ever be possible to upstream it.

I'm curious to hear from Johannes now then.

Thank you for the information,
Karel