[CS-FSLUG] wireless NIC - licensing

[Josiah Ritchie]

On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 20:38, Frank Bax wrote:
> 	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.

I don't know about the name thing, but as far as packaging in a
distro... Gentoo just tells you where from and to download it and it
takes care of the rest.

JSR/