Messages in this thread |  | | | Date | Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:35:08 -0500 | | Subject | Re: [git pull] drm | | From | Will Dyson <> |
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On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Pekka Paalanen <pq@iki.fi> wrote:
> The big question is what we call ctxprogs: binary blobs that are > clearly executable, running somewhere in the GPU. No-one seems > to know, if those are copyrightable, or if they can be redistributed. > In their current form, they have been recorded from the nvidia > proprietary driver using mmiotrace, and copied verbatim for each > card type. > > Would you be willing to pull that kind of stuff into Linux? > > I would not even dare sending them to the Linux firmware > repository, since they have some license requirements, too.
This seems similar to the unfortunate situation with the b43 wireless card firmware. Broadcom refuses to provide the firmware under a redistributable license (or even as files separate from their proprietary drivers). This did not stop b43 from being included in Linux. Distributions have dealt with it by providing a script that downloads the proprietary driver and extracts the firmware from it to files in /lib/firmware.
Do you think that a similar solution for nouveau would be legally problematic? Or is the issue technical, since you mention that the ctxprogs were obtained by mmiotrace, instead of a more straightforward extraction from the binary driver blobs?
-- Will Dyson
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