[Fsf-Debian] A small thought on how Debian might be able to help.

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

On 09/05/2014 12:32 PM, Brian Gupta wrote:
> As an aside, how are certain wifi chipsets "FSF blessed"? Is it
> because they keep any firmware on non-volatile storage (meaning no
> blobs have to be delivered by OS) and not field upgradable, or is it
> because they somehow provide sourcecode for the firmware, which
> distros are free to compile into "free blobs"?

the ath9k-htc at least has compilable firmware (though the compilation 
steps appear to involve patching the toolchain itself, so they are not 
particularly easy compared to most debian build processes):

   https://github.com/qca/open-ath9k-htc-firmware

I can't speak for other "blessed" wifi devices.

	--dkg