Congratulations to you and FIC

Richard Franks richard.franks at drdc-rddc.gc.ca
Tue Nov 14 21:04:56 CET 2006


> > The One Laptop per Child project is developing a free driver + firmware
> > for the Marvell chip that will be used in the $100 Laptop. Maybe that
> > code could be reused here.
> 
> How free? NDA and a GPL'ed driver afterwards?
> 
> Have you got a link for me about this?

Quotes selected from:
http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/286/


"The Linux driver for the Marvell 88W8388 is already complete and
licensed under the GNU General Public License, but the driver only
interfaces with an ARM processor that in turn makes the wireless radio
devices work. That processor requires its own tiny operating system in
order to function, and this operating system is the firmware in
question. Without the firmware, the processor is brain dead, and the
device driver -- and by association, the device itself -- is useless."

"The problem is, this Marvell wireless chip requires proprietary
firmware, and as the license agreement in the preceding link shows, it
is not free-as-in-rights to use, distribute, modify, or study."

"There is an ongoing effort to negotiate with Marvell for the right to
freely redistribute this proprietary [firmware] code, while at the same
time some OLPC-contracted developers have signed a non-disclosure
agreement (NDA) to access Marvell's hardware documentation in order to
create a free software replacement for it."

Cheers,
Richard




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