From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: "Alexander E. Patrakov" <patrakov@gmail.com>
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-usb@vger.kernel.org,
linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: loading firmware while usermodehelper disabled.
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 2012 13:43:31 +0000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20120103134331.43e80a43@pyramind.ukuu.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20120103151637.1388e204@home>
> What a heated discussion due to, essentially, a non-technical, legal
> issue! Remember that the whole "userspace firmware loader" saga
> together with the asynchronous firmware interface started when Debian
> started complaining over the non-freeness of the firmware being bundled
> as a part of the kernel module as an array of bytes. That design,
Actually thats only a part of it, and irrelevant anyway.
Compiling in the firmware is 1:1 mapping with doing request_firmware at
module load and freeing it on module unload. We can do that today, and in
fact some drivers with small firmware do. The other reason it exists is
because we have drivers that have megabytes of firmware data attached to
them, sometimes several versions for different chip versions. In those
cases neither compiling it in nor loading it on module load is a workable
solution because of the memory usage.
In some of the extreme cases like qcserial I don't think anyone has even
been able to count all the firmwares that exist !
> however, never had such dependency issues. So maybe revert to it, with
> the following changes, and solve the legal issue seen by Debian by
> hiring a lawyer?
It may have escaped your notice but a lot of Linux companies have
corporate lawyers and do talk to them about such issues and have been for
years.
Alan
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2012-01-03 13:42 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 91+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <20111230235421.GA6054@redhat.com>
2011-12-31 0:22 ` loading firmware while usermodehelper disabled Linus Torvalds
2011-12-31 0:40 ` Matthew Garrett
2011-12-31 15:33 ` Alan Stern
2011-12-31 15:59 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-01 2:21 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-01 12:22 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-01 16:17 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-01 16:25 ` Michael Büsch
2012-01-01 20:30 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-01 21:27 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-01 21:39 ` Michael Büsch
2012-01-02 3:33 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 7:56 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-02 4:17 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-02 5:35 ` Gábor Stefanik
2012-01-02 8:38 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-02 16:54 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-02 20:41 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-02 20:48 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 20:55 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-02 21:00 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 21:09 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-02 21:23 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 21:31 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-02 21:52 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-02 21:57 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-02 22:31 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-02 23:25 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:31 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-03 0:44 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:58 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 7:17 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-03 7:41 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-03 0:35 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 0:50 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-02 21:19 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 21:26 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:42 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 11:57 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-03 12:19 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 13:20 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 13:30 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-03 13:36 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-02 21:27 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 21:50 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 22:03 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 22:12 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 22:19 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 22:29 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 22:46 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-02 23:00 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-02 23:31 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:13 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-03 0:20 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 0:37 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-03 0:22 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:31 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 0:41 ` Jack Stone
2012-01-03 0:38 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-03 0:47 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 0:18 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-03 8:26 ` Ingo Molnar
2012-01-03 2:45 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-03 3:25 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-03 5:53 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-03 11:50 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-03 15:16 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-03 12:24 ` Matthew Garrett
2012-01-03 16:29 ` Linus Torvalds
2012-01-03 15:09 ` Alan Stern
2012-01-03 9:16 ` Alexander E. Patrakov
2012-01-03 9:24 ` david
2012-01-03 13:43 ` Alan Cox [this message]
2012-01-03 14:12 ` Bernd Petrovitsch
2012-01-03 0:00 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-02 23:50 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-02 23:53 ` Alan Cox
2011-12-31 16:27 ` Matthew Garrett
2011-12-31 14:20 ` Martin Schleier
2011-12-31 18:39 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-01 9:48 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-01 9:54 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-01 12:28 ` Oliver Neukum
2012-01-01 16:32 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-01 17:06 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-01 20:39 ` Alan Cox
2012-01-01 20:50 ` Michael Büsch
2012-01-02 3:24 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-02 3:29 ` Marek Vasut
2012-01-01 3:49 ` Larry Finger
2012-01-01 22:45 ` Jack Stone
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20120103134331.43e80a43@pyramind.ukuu.org.uk \
--to=alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-usb@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=patrakov@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).