Re: Linux, binary blob and binary driver summary for vendors?

From: Mikko Rapeli
Date: Mon Aug 01 2011 - 10:38:48 EST


On Mon, Aug 01, 2011 at 03:13:02PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Aug 2011 16:42:12 +0300
> Mikko Rapeli <mikko.rapeli@xxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > What is a good and also technically detailed summary of the binary blob and
> > driver issues with Linux kernel and GPL?
> >
> > I'd like to refer a vendor to some documentation regarding this instead
> > writing a ton of text with IANAL everywhere.
>
> I would suggest they talk to the Linux Foundation. It's basically a legal
> question around derivative works, and that's a lawyer question that tends
> to need looking at by lawyers per piece of code.

Good point, thanks.

> Aside from that there are technical, marketing and PR things to consider.

For the technical issues I've found Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
and these links:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/technical-advisory-board-tab/lfstatement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob

These should be enough to start. Next question will hopefully be answered by
the staging tree.

-Mikko
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