[CS-FSLUG] wireless NIC - licensing
Frank Bax
fbax at sympatico.ca
Thu Nov 11 19:38:11 CST 2004
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/archive/misc/0411/msg01185.html
Over in the OpenBSD-misc mailing list, we learned this week that Intel has
decided against making any changes to the licensing of firmware for
wireless nic's. The bsd folks were not asking for access to source
code. They were asking for the right to freely redistribute the binary
code. As I understand things, without the ability to freely distribute the
firmware binaries, the firmware is not be bundled with any
distro. Installation of firmware requires acceptance of a click-through
license.
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=4
Apparently folks in several Linux camps (SuSE, Mandrake) do not have a
problem with this license. I'm no legal person, but this license looks scary!
The license appears to say that if I'm not the "end user", then the first
part must apply. You agree to never print "Intel" or any trademark they
own without their written consent!
If I agreed to that license (I didn't) this email (by discussing it) would
a violation of it.
Frank
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