Hi there,
I've been recently looking at the (ancient) AppleTalk/LocalTalk drivers
because I've been working on a modern LocalTalk network adapter for
crazy vintage computer enthusiasts like myself. ;-) In the process, I
discovered the existence of cops_ffdrv.h and cops_ltdrv.h in the kernel
source tree (drivers/net/appletalk), which contain proprietary binary
blobs for old COPS LocalTalk ISA cards with pretty vague licensing in
terms of ability to redistribute:
This material is licensed to you strictly for use in conjunction with
the use of COPS LocalTalk adapters.
There is no charge for this SDK. And no waranty express or implied
about its fitness for any purpose. However, we will cheerefully
refund every penny you paid for this SDK...
Regards,
Thomas F. Divine
Chief Scientist
I was surprised that these blobs were still in the kernel source. I
think it would be nice to remove another set of nonfree blobs from the
kernel source tree. Sadly, Mr. Divine passed away in 2015, so we can't
get any further input from him. Is this license acceptable enough to
migrate these two firmware binaries to linux-firmware and change the
driver to use request_firmware? Following the process in the
linux-firmware README to a T is likely not 100% possible because there's
nothing about permission to redistribute, and I won't be able to get a
Signed-off-by line. I've been experimenting in QEMU to convert the
driver to use request_firmware and have something working, but I wanted
to check before submitting a firmware pull request to start going
forward with this. Alternatively, if that's not acceptable, would it
make more sense to follow the route of other drivers like the iSight
camera driver (drivers/usb/misc/isight_firmware.c), and use
request_firmware, but supply instructions for extracting the firmware
binaries from the original source instead of including them in
linux-firmware? They are still available through archive.org's old
capture of the (now defunct) company's website, so instructions could be
provided for downloading and extracting it yourself.
To be honest though -- the whole thing is probably a moot point given
that the driver in question is for an ISA card. Is there really someone
out there still using this driver? With that in mind, I suppose another
option would be to remove the driver altogether. I was hoping somebody
could provide some input on the correct way to handle this situation. I
would be happy to take care of it, but I'm unsure of the correct
approach. Any direction would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Doug
