General description of developments
- shows the current state of developments of programs that have a chance to go GPL
- the assumptions are taken from the following rules :
- a language exists and tools can compile it for the plateform
- free is defined as its strictest definition : binary and source are furnished
- a plateform is the place where software is executed/run
- source is defined as the language used to modify what is then compiled into binary to work
- configuration files are a list of parameters that are used to modify the behaviour of the program
This table tries to show the dependancies on hardware and which kind of projects can currently be covered quite easily by GPL and those where there are shades of grey.
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hardware |
CPU
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graphic card
/ GPU
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ethernet
devices
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USB devices
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computer |
peripherals
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<= more free
more proprietary =>
well this
by fd?
Distribution of firmware / BNM
See
this thread in French (sorry) that analyzes the GPL license, our right to distribute BNM / firmware (I'm not clear on which licence applies though)
This
thread by Nathanel Nerode is optimistic and shows the way
- the driver is free if it works without the non-free firmware
- loading an external firmware is a "working driver"
So let's externalize the firmware (requirement, implementation to be discussed).
Driver