On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 11:04 -0800, Ben Greear wrote: > > It appears to be the case. It might be technically possible to > hack up madwifi as a module w/out the HAL and force end-users to > download and install the HAL (and taint their kernel) to have a useful > setup. That would go against much of what Linux stands for though, > so I doubt it would be acceptable. > If someone has a reverse-engineered HAL that might could > be used as well.
I don't think that would fly based on past precedents. Leaving some kind of hook for the proprietary binary isn't allowed (see the PWC camera driver problems from a year or so back), and you can't have a module in the kernel that won't build unless you pull down another .o file to link against or whatever. What we have seen is permitted is a driver that requires a closed binary firmware to be loaded to operate (ipw2x00, prism54). I don't know the details of the Atheros chip to know if it might be possible to generate a firmware that users would have to install in /lib/firmware and let the driver load it up. If so, that would be the answer.
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