Re: Adding firmware to FSD

[Yuchen Pei]

On 2 October 2021 08:59:43 GMT+10:00, Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli 
<GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Fri, 1 Oct 2021 14:09:07 -0400
>Craig Topham <craigt@fsf.org> wrote:
>
>> 
>> 
>> On 9/24/21 3:51 AM, Yuchen Pei wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > Does it make sense to start a collection on free firmware?  One can
>> > start by adding items appearing on say
>> > <https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware/Open> to the directory.
>> >
>> > If we add some info of firmware for hardware entries on h-node.org,
>> > then the two wikis can link to each other: hardware entries on
>> > h-node can link to firmware entries on FSD and vice versa. :)
>> >
>> > What do you think?
>> >
>> I think this is a good idea. Having the two wikis interlinked will
>> bring more attention to both. I am not sure a new collection is
>> necessary (at this time). After looking at the current Collections,
>> it seems we need to do a little house cleaning (and hone the purpose
>> of collections) before we create more. If a specific h-node hardware
>> runs on a free firmware, then that firmware should be vetted, added
>> to the FSD, and linked from h-node with a link (in the description?)
>> to h-node from the FSD entry. Example:
>> <https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Das_U-Boot>
>For u-boot, its source code contains:
>- various nonfree x86 microcode in arch/x86/dts/microcode/
>- a nonfree firmware in drivers/usb/host/xhci-rcar-r8a779x_usb3_v3.h
>  (its license is in Licenses/r8a779x_usb3.txt)
>- instructions to combine u-boot images with nonfree software. For
>  instance for the computers with an Exynos System On a Chip (SOC)
>  the boards won't boot bootloaders not signed by Samsung, so there are
>  instructions to download a signed and nonfree first stage bootloader
>  and combine that with u-boot.
>
>I wonder how to handle that. I've just asked the gnu-linux-libre
>mailing list for best practice on how to remove nonfree code found in
>free software source code to handle u-boot.
>
>Libreboot should however be fully free. Some firmwares running on
>peripherals like the ath9k_htc firmware are most probably fully free as
>they are shipped by all or almost all FSDG compliant distributions and
>I guess that some people checked the source code at the time of the
>release. AS I understand the ath9k_htc firmware is also built from
>source with a free toolchain, so that should be covered as well.

Shall we add the ath9k firmware to fsd?  Or is it there already?  Btw seems 
like there are two atheros firmware (plural) on the Debian "open firmware" page.

>
>I think that in general it would be a good idea too, especially because
>we could also check again the freedom of the source code of these
>firmwares while adding them to the directory.
>
>Denis.