From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Sun Mar  7 19:57:35 1999
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Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 13:57:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Chris David <cdavid@umich.edu>
To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: ALSA Soundcard Vendor Information
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On Sun, 7 Mar 1999, Jaroslav Kysela wrote:

> 
> > Could you possibly take a somewhat stronger stand than Linus does?
> 
> My problem is what should I tell to end users which doesn't know
> anything about GPL, free software, but they want use their hardware with
> Linux? I hate NDAs, but it seems that we must live with them. I will
> silently ignore all binary drivers and I won't support binary drivers,
> but I don't disallow binary drivers.
>

I think ALSA is taking a stronger stance than Linus.  While it has not
made it into the document yet, ALSA is going to require that binary only
drivers have some notice that says don't email the alsa-user list for help
with this driver.  There is more too I think.

I'll have those edits made very soon.
 
> >      While we will accept source for firmware, we do not
> >     require it. Firmware in binary form is just fine.
> > 
> > Even if you will *accept* binary-only firmware, I hope you will not
> > say "binary form is just fine".  Please say that source is better.
> 
> This is good point. Chris David, could you add this notice to the text
> (that we preffer source than binary firmware code)?
> 

Yes.

> > Also, what about permission to modify and translate the firmware?  I
> > hope you will insist on those freedoms, even if the firmware is only binary.
> > (Someone else could then disassemble it, try to understand it, and add
> > comments to it.)
> 
> I'm not sure that we must insist on this freedom. It will be nice, but
> we don't require modifications of the firmware for the sound driver
> development when the firmware (a code for some other processor) doesn't
> break the security of an operating system.
>

Yes, I agree.  The way I view this is that firware can often be exteremly
proprietary.  For example, imagine if the "firmware" was programming some
SRAM based FPGA.  I completely understand that a company doesn't want to
release the source for this.  It would be like giving us Verilog source
for part of their design.  And that source should be completely
unnecessary to write a good driver.

Now a DSP is a little different.  If I were a DSP programmer, I would
probably enjoy being able to modify firmware for this.  Not because its
needed to write the driver, but because I enjoy programming DSPs.  

None the less, I personally think that if a company cooperates with us in
general, they should be able to release us the binary firmware under terms
that protect their work.  Its not ideal, but it gets the job done.

But my point is, if a company does give us binary firmware, what terms are
we willing to agree to?  Is there anything to bound all ALSA users to
these terms?  Do we want to spell these terms out in the documents? I'm
thinking no.

I bet the video driver developers run into this problem too.  I
wonder what they do about it.  Anybody know?

-Chris

 
> 							Jaroslav
> 
> -----
> Jaroslav Kysela <perex@jcu.cz>
> Academic Computer Centre, University of South Bohemia
> Branisovska 31, C. Budejovice, CZ-370 05 Czech Republic
> 
> 
> 
> ------
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