Re: Qlogic/FC firmware

Alan Cox
2001-08-22T00:21:44Z

> On Tue, 21 Aug 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> >Look, if its not distributable then its no good to anyone.
>
> Who said it wasn't distributable? The license in the 2.4.5 file doesn't say
> you cannot distribute it. It doesn't even prevent you from sell it. You have
> to leave the notice intact and not use it as a means to attach the Qlogic
> mark to any derived product.

* 2. Redistribution in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
* notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
* documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

Which is a problem because the kernel is GPL, that isnt GPL compatible
and until this was pointed out nobody has been going to print their blurb
in all the manuals - because after all it says GPL.

Licenses cannot be ignored. If I merge non GPL compliant code I'm doing to
the contributors to the kernel the very same thing people pirating windows
do to microsoft.

> Other than it's age, I see *zero* reason to remove it from the tree.

Well let me quote from it again

/*
* W W A RRRR N N IIIII N N GGG
* W W A A R R N N I N N G G
* W W A A R R NN N I NN N G
* W W W AAAAA RRR N N N I N N N G GG
* W W W A A R R N NN I N NN G G
* W W W W A A R R N N I N N G G
* W W A A R R N N IIIII N N GGGG
*
* This version of firmware is a release candidate,
* design verification testing (DVT) has not been completed.
*/

or in simple terms "might lose all your data"

> >Well maybe, and whats the right way to do that, oh my god I do believe its
> >an initrd.
>
> __init_data

Doesnt work in modules. See previous twice repeated discussion.

As Matthew has noted, we have a source of newer firmware, and because the
sparc's have this annoying firmware problem it is going to be appropriate
to add build in firmware as a config option (probably set with def_bool on
sparc..)

At the time a) I didnt realise the sparc setup was so anal, and b) I didnt
know about the firmware update.

Alan