Re: Intel microcode fixes [OFF-TOPIC]
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
21 Nov 1998 10:42:33 GMT
Followup to: <Pine.LNX.4.02.9811201647281.386-100000@einstein.london.sco.com>
By author: Tigran Aivazian <tigran@aivazian.demon.co.uk>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
>
> Calm down. Imho, nobody (not even OS vendors) know or care what is in those
> "microcode fixes". Intel gives everybody a binary "blob" and OS puts it
> where needed. Of course, anyone can use it to his advantage, e.g. putting
> the blobe only in OS release > X.Y and thus forcing customers to use that
> release (or risk missing something very important in those "blobs") or say
> "such and such OS has this blob and Linux does not, so...". The interesting
> dilema is whether these blobs can go into the official kernel or not. Since
> there would be no such thing as "source"; for the microcode itself *is* a
> source so applying GPL to it is like multiplying a vector with
> identity matrix?
>
Binary firmware to be uploaded into a device can go into the kernel
(as it is not a part of the kernel executable but is considered data);
this I would presume would be covered by the same rule.
-hpa
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