free firmware mistakenly removed by LinuxLibre

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan  1, 2011, Felipe Sanches <juca at members.fsf.org> wrote:

> I believe that we should send patches to Linux Makefiles so that these
> files are assembled during kernel build.

That would be fine, if the cross tools to assemble (or even compile)
pieces of firmware are available.  If they aren't, why demand users to
have them handy?  Shipping the binaries for these cases is not a
problem.

> Being able to build the firmware can also work as proof that the
> source code available is actually functional and equivalent to the
> binaries that are currently shipped blindly.

Yeah, but we only have to verify that this is the case once, not do it
every time, and risk breakage in the tools or hardware on random users'
systems flagging false positives.

-- 
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