Atheros HAL Under Free Software License

[trschober]

No, throwing scraps would be if Broadcom dumped a driver under an opensource license:
really late, and probably outdated.

I highly encourage anyone to throw their driver code over the wall: yes, it's better when they work with the community, but if the code is under a FSF- approved license, then at some point, it will attract attention.

believe it or not....they did some months ago but for some reason there was no noise at all in the usual channels

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

still not clear if its free or not

[yesterday]

Yeah, would be nice if there was a "generic" HAL that would work with just about any wifi card out there so that you can at least get the vast majority of cards working with minimum fuss, albeit with just the basic features. Then Wifi woes would be pretty much gone and thus one less gripe about Linux (lack of wifi drivers). Then many distros can ship the HAL with their CD's so users can get up and running quickly

IIRC, the atheros HAL is essentially a firmware blob. The Atheros chipset is fairly generalised with extra features provide by the firmware.

Not all cards are made this way. There is no wifi HAL standard AFAIK, and the more expensive cards implement more features in the chipset rather than the firmware. Hence, a generic HAL doesn't really solve anything, because we would still need all the card specific information that we currently need in the respective drivers

[dbstraffin]

believe it or not....they did some months ago but for some reason there was no noise at all in the usual channels

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

still not clear if its free or not

After a quick look, it seems like it's a binary blob with a GPL source code wrapper to insert it into the kernel. Not really what we are looking for. But I suppose it's slightly better then having to use fwcutter to pull the blob out of the windows driver or using ndiswrapper.

[izual]

Atheros seems to have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in this mission...

[AHSauge]

After a quick look, it seems like it's a binary blob with a GPL source code wrapper to insert it into the kernel. Not really what we are looking for. But I suppose it's slightly better then having to use fwcutter to pull the blob out of the windows driver or using ndiswrapper.

Not that I've taken a good look at it or anything, but that binary blob is most likely the firmware that has to be loaded onto the card. If I remember correct, that firmware has to be closed source because of a US regulation thingy that's suppose to prevent people from doing modifications on radio devices. One way to circumvent that is to have the firmware permanently on the card, otherwise I believe you have to show that the source code is sufficiently preventing end user modifications. I might be wrong though ...

[_txf_]

Not that I've taken a good look at it or anything, but that binary blob is most likely the firmware that has to be loaded onto the card. If I remember correct, that firmware has to be closed source because of a US regulation thingy that's suppose to prevent people from doing modifications on radio devices. One way to circumvent that is to have the firmware permanently on the card, otherwise I believe you have to show that the source code is sufficiently preventing end user modifications. I might be wrong though ...

You're probably right, not that I have looked at it either. This is what Intel does with their latest drivers (iwl), the usual suspects complained that the drivers contained a binary firmware blob, but Intel said it couldn't do anything about it for the reasons explained above...

EDIT: reading the language on the download page suggests it is using a shim like other binary blobs. The binary section seems to be os agnostic though. What the hell is a hybrid binary?

[Nostromo]

Wait, huh?
Read this response: http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/9/26/341

So has it been released under a free software license or hasn't it?

Is that post just trying to say that even though the code is now open, it's still proprietary and kinda nonfree

I'm confused.

Well that's the problem with the BSD license, isn't it? They take BSD code, then they make a couple of changes or add a few lines and SHAZAM!! it's their proprietary code released only as a binary, and that's perfectly legal.