From alsa-devel-owner@alsa.jcu.cz  Sun Mar  7 20:30:06 1999
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Date: Sun, 7 Mar 1999 20:28:53 +0100
From: Marcus Brinkmann <Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de>
To: alsa-devel@alsa.jcu.cz
Subject: Re: ALSA Soundcard Vendor Information
References: <Pine.LNX.3.96.990307175010.23630B-100000@entry.jcu.cz> <Pine.SOL.4.05.9903071308090.17667-100000@stargate.rs.itd.umich.edu>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.SOL.4.05.9903071308090.17667-100000@stargate.rs.itd.umich.edu>; from Chris David on Sun, Mar 07, 1999 at 01:57:02PM -0500
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On Sun, Mar 07, 1999 at 01:57:02PM -0500, Chris David wrote:
> 
> 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.

Note that if you include Firmware in the Alsa distribution, it will be
difficult for me to comply to the GPL when distributing ALsa, because I
can't copy the source of the firmware, as the GPL requests. So non-free
Firmware should probably be distributed and made available outside of Alsa.

(I have experienced with such issue, as I'm a distribution builder. In
Debian, this was the very reason why KDE couldn't be shipped, for example).

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

On the GGI lists, folks are very binary only driver friendly. Do I need to
say more?

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
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