Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.

Jes Sorensen
2005-04-07T07:28:58Z

>>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com> writes:

Jeff> Sven Luther wrote:
>> Yep, but in the meantime, let's clearly mark said firmware as
>> not-covered-by-the-GPL. In the acenic case it seems to be even
>> easier, as the firmware is in a separate acenic_firmware.h file,
>> and it just needs to have the proper licencing statement added,
>> saying that it is not covered by the GPL, and then giving the
>> information under what licence it is being distributed.

Jeff> Who has meaningfully contacted Alteon (probably "Neterion" now)
Jeff> about this? What is the progress of that request?

Whoever actually owns the rights to the firmware these days is going
to be practically impossible to track down. The rights were sold off
left and right when Alteon sold out to Nortel and Nortel then
imploded.

The s2io/neterion guys may or may not know, but I doubt anyone is
willing to spend real company manhours trying to track down a legal
trace for a dead product which hasn't been manufactured for years and
nobody really cares about technology wise anymore.

Regards,
Jes