linux-kernel - Re: [otus-devel] Release of Atheros 802.11n USB Linux driver

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:18:22 -0700
From:	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>
To:	Joerg Albert <jal2@....de>
Cc:	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@...il.com>,
	"otus-devel@...ts.madwifi-project.org" 
	<otus-devel@...ts.madwifi-project.org>,
	"linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org" <linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org>,
	Linux-Kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Luis Rodriguez <Luis.Rodriguez@...eros.com>,
	Johannes Berg <johannes@...solutions.net>
Subject: Re: [otus-devel] Release of Atheros 802.11n USB Linux driver

On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 02:24:02PM +0100, Joerg Albert wrote:
> On 10/28/2008 12:35 AM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>
>> This is now fixed on the master branch, also the branch "for-upstream"
>> does a lot of cleanup I thought you may like before stuffing it into
>> staging like removing all KERNEL_VERSION checks, all wireless
>> extensions checks, some compile warnings, removal of compat, dos2unix,
>> use utf-8, etc. Unfortunately this still requires a specific version
>> of wpa_supplicant but it seems it works. Not sure what bars you have
>> for staging at this point.
>
> I was a bit disappointed to find binary-only firmware inside the driver 
> (HalPlus/OTUS_FB50/{hpfwbu,hpfwuinit}.c which is downloaded into the device 
> during startup (initially thought this to be a complete OpenSource driver 
> :-(

Binary firmware for a device does make the driver still "open source"
except for how some people intrepret it.

It is legal from a kernel standpoint though, and so it is fine to add to
the kernel as-is.

> Unless the attitude towards binary chunks inside the Linux kernel have 
> changed, I guess these should be moved into userspace using the 
> firmware_class driver to access it.

Yes they should, patches gladly accepted :)

thanks,

greg k-h
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/