Clemens Ladisch wrote:
Thanks for all your help Clemens and apologies for the slow reply.
Tim Jackson wrote:
[... emi firmware licensing]
The emi firmware files are copies of linux/drivers/usb/misc/emi26_fw.h and emi62_fw_*.h. emi26_fw.h contains three copies of this "license", but only the first one contains this paragraph which is missing in license.txt:
| Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware | image as part of a Linux or other Open Source operating system kernel | in text or binary form as required.
I've added this paragraph to license.txt.
Thanks.
Does the ALSA project have special authorisation ("written consent") to distribute this?
Well, I'd guess the alsa-firmware package is part of Linux.
Unfortunately I don't think that's a "guess" that some distributors such as Fedora can risk to take. Although ALSA is of course part of a "Linux ... kernel", the wording "as part of" is ambiguous and there's certainly an argument that a standalone ALSA firmware package (i.e. not distributed along with the rest of the kernel) is not "distribution...as part of" a kernel.
Much though I'd *like* these firmwares to be distributable, unless those licensing terms get changed, I think we'll have to drop those particular firmwares in Fedora.
Please note that the emi26 and emi62 drivers still use the in-kernel copies of their firmware images; the files in alsa-firmware are as yet unused.
That's useful, thanks. Is the plan to drop the in-kernel ones at some point then? At least this means if we do drop the firmware it won't have any negative effect, at least at the moment.
Thanks
Tim