Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Endorsed distro review for LibreCMC

[bob]

On 2014-06-06 07:36, Riley Baird (Orthogonal) wrote:
> On 29/05/14 00:52, Michał Masłowski wrote:
> > I believe the u-boot source downloaded by LibreCMC (and LibreWRT)
> > contains sourceless firmware blobs that we should remove.  They are
> > not used by any supported device.
> >
> > At least these paths inside u-boot-2013.10 might contain nonfree
> > code:
> >
> > - arch/powerpc/cpu/mpc8xx/upatch.c: contains microcode patches -
> > various files with "fpgadata" in the names: hexadecimal arrays of
> > code uploaded to FPGAs - board/netta/dsp.c: bootstrap_rbin -
> > drivers/dma/MCD_tasks.c: "task code and structures", the code is
> > hexadecimal
> >
> > It should be easy to adapt Linux-libre's scripts to remove them.
>
> Interesting. Have you found any more blobs? If u-boot were compiled
> using a tarball with the blobs included, would the device be running
> nonfree code?
No, because libreCMC does not target those architectures. You can't run
PowerPC code on a MIPS CPU. It just does not work. The only targets we 
support
are AR71xx/AR9xx SoC and Xburst CPU (which are based upon the MIPS 
architecture).

I'm working on creating a libre version of u-boot with the hopes of 
talking to
the u-boot project in the future.