Bug#388756: Comments from Digium

[Kevin P. Fleming]

This issue was just brought to my attention, so I'll try to clear up any confusion involved here regarding the wct4xxp driver.

First, even though the .ima file is included in a tarball that contains a GPL license, it is not covered by that license. It is also not directly part of the program in that form. The build process does convert the firmware into a header file and include it into the module, though, which is (to some degree) a violation of the GPL on the kernel. Given that kernel maintainers' stance on this in the past, we are not terribly concerned about it. It also violates the GPL on Zaptel itself, but since we are the GPL licensors of Zaptel and also the distributors of the infringing code, we are not concerned about that either.

Second, the driver already contains support for userspace loading of the firmware, and it's trivial to modify the Makefile/driver to _NOT_ build the firmware into the kernel module at all. This was done specifically so that people could avoid this GPL issue.

The module is completely usable without the firmware, as long as the user does not have the optional Octasic module on their TE4XXP card (and most users do not have those modules).

My recommendation would be for Debian to build/ship wct4xxp.ko with only userspace firmware loading enabled (not the build-time linking of the firmware into the module), and then package the firmware itself in a non-free package that just puts the firmware into the proper place for the userspace firmware loader to find it.

-- 
Kevin P. Fleming
Senior Software Engineer
Digium, Inc.