On Thu, 14 Jan 2005, Hubert Feyrer wrote:

> > A more interesting question is whether shipment of the Broadcom driver in
> > binary firmware distributions for the device violates the GPL.  Until
> > Cisco forced Linksys to comply with the GPL at all, the firmware was
> > supplied *only* as a single binary image.
>
> Smells like a violation, yes.

It's a shaky one.  It's possible to make "binary-only" Linux drivers by
providing a source code glue layer and requiring the user to modload it
(thus making it not linked with the Linux kernel and not GPL).  This was
done with the first generation of winmodem drivers for Linux (from Lucent?).

However, given that the driver in this case is embedded into a fixed,
nonconfigurable flash image... that makes it a bit more interesting.

Of course, I have no love for Broadcom.  Their NDAs are the second worst in
the business, and they serve to hide just how much work they're offloading
onto a host CPU in the name of cheaper production cost.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@duh.org> <tv@pobox.com>