Aeluros 2005 PHY support in Linux-libre

Alexandre Oliva lxoliva at fsfla.org
Wed Dec 3 18:22:47 UTC 2008


Hi,

I've been staring at sr_edc and twinax_edc, in the patch you posted at
http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/10/8/300

I can see that, as copyright holder and manufacturer of the part,
Chelsio is entitled to publish those sequences of bits however it
likes.  However, I can't make sense of those bits to the point of being
able to enjoy the right to modify that code, as granted by the GPL.

Would it be possible to add any documentation as to what that sequence
of numbers is supposed to mean?  I can't even convince myself it's just
data; it has a regularity that resembles machine code, which makes me
wonder if you just forgot to include the corresponding sources in the
patch, which anyone else would be required to have in order to be able
to redistribute it under the GPL (e.g. as part of Linux).

Unsure whether redistributing those bits under the GPL is even legal,
I'm taking them out of linux-libre for the time being, but I'd be glad
to put it back in once I'm convinced the four freedoms are available as
to that piece of code.

Thanks in advance for any information you might be able to share in this
regard,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva           http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer


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