OpenFWWF for Broadcom wireless cards and Linux-libre

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Apr 16, 2009, Tomek Chrzczonowicz <chrzczonowicz at gmail.com> wrote:

> I might soon get a chance to try it out, but can I make it work with
> newer versions of Linux-libre if the firmware-loading mechanism has been
> disabled for drivers with proprietary firmware?

Support for these firmwares is present in 2.6.30 pre-releases upstream.
I'm yet to clean up the patches, though.

I'm undecided as to whether to retrofit support for the Free firmware
into Linux-libre releases corresponding to earlier kernels.  It's a bit
against the rules of keeping changes to a minimum, but it would probably
be a smaller change than disabling it altogether, like we do today.  And
it might make deblob simpler, in that its patterns wouldn't have to
somehow tell pre-2.6.30 code from 2.6.30+.

I'm afraid I might be unable to clean up 2.6.30-rc2 before going on a
trip to Panama for FLISOL, April 21-26 :-(  I certainly wouldn't mind if
someone else beat me to it :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer