Re: [gNewSense-users] KFV firmware freedom check

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May  5, 2008, jeff <address@hidden> wrote:

> Christophe Jarry wrote:
>> I'm on my way to check for the freedom of the drivers found by the
>> find-firmware script of Brian (I still don't know how to use the BLAG's
>> script at
>> http://svn.gnewsense.svnhopper.net/gnewsense/builder/trunk/firmware/deblob-2.6.24.4.1,
>>  
>> 
>> if someone could help me, thanks in advance!). Here is what I've checked
>> for now:

> The deblob script isn't for finding blobs, but removing known ones. It
> does so, in most cases, by removing the entire file that contained the
> blob and removing that driver from Kconfig and the Makefile.

As for removing the entire file, for 2.6.25 I've come up with an
alternate deblob script that, instead of removing the complete driver,
removes only the firmware code in it, and marks the driver as
depending on NONFREE in the Kernel config file.

It makes the driver unselectable without further changes to the source
code, and removes all the non-Free stuff in its source code, but at
least the Free Software in there is left alone, such that anyone
willing to drop in Free firmware, or change the code to no longer
depend on the non-Free firmware, can use that as a starting point.

More importantly, it makes it easier to integrate upstream patches,
especially minor, rc and git ones, that often touch these files but
without modifying the firmware portions.  I expect this will make it
much easier for me to track daily kernel builds.

This proposal is implemented in the script available at
http://www.fsfla.org/svn/fsfla/software/linux-libre/scripts/deblob-2.6.25

The resulting kernel tree hasn't been "blessed" by you, which is why
for my 2.6.25 Fedora builds I've named the result libre-linux.  If we
agree this is the way to go, I'll go back to using linux-libre, like I
did in the 2.6.24 series.


deblob-2.6.25 depends on the following to remove only the firmwares,
rather than the entire files containing them.  If deblob-check is not
present, it will proceed to remove the entire file.

> Also see this monster of a script done by Alexandre Oliva:
> http://www.fsfla.org/svn/fsfla/software/linux-libre/scripts/deblob-check

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  address@hidden, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   address@hidden, gcc.gnu.org}