[GNU-linux-libre] Re: PCMCIA .cis files

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan  4, 2011, Richard Stallman <address@hidden> wrote:

>     Yeah, I believe so.  I'm not sure the current pcmcia driver doesn't
>     really offer the interface the userland program that makes the
>     conversion relies on, or if it only fails to do so on a machine that
>     doesn't have a pcmcia interface, but the important point is that it's
>     definitely not functional on any random machine.

> In that case, either we need a separate binary-to-text converter for
> these files

http://www.mail-archive.com/address@hidden/msg03468.html
has a patch by Dmitry Eremin-Solenikov with a stand-alone version of the
dump_cis program, that converts .cis binary to text.  The separate patch
that introduces mkcis, to convert from text to binary, wasn't archived
there, but we already have a stand-alone program that does that job, so
there aren't any freedom problems with the binaries, the only issue now,
if any, is GPL compliance: sh/could we ship only the binaries if we know
they were built from textual sources that we don't ship?

FWIW, 2.6.37-libre is already out, without the .cis files, but with
requests for them.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer