openSUSE Release Process » openSUSE Leap 15.2

Notably two new non-oss firmware packages

SR to improve instructions https://github.com/openSUSE/openSUSE-release-process/pull/24

From Ciaran:

Confirmed and reviewed. I don't see any kind of redistribution
permission for the bladeRF firmware. Are you sure those files are
redistributable?

Ciaran

I did message #bladerf channel on Freenode:

20<lkocman>30 Hello team, I'd like to double check one detail regarding intelectual property and redistribution of your firmware in openSUSE Leap 15.2
20<lkocman>30 We seem to re-distribute bladeRF-fpga-firmware and bladeRF-fx3-firmware as part of openSUSE Leap non-oss repository
20<lkocman>30 I just want to double check that there are no legal implications. 

I also did message the bladerf contact email bladeRF@nuand.com.

Response from irc
18<mIKEjONES> hey
18<mIKEjONES> are you from Suse?
18<mIKEjONES> so the bladeRF FX3 source code on Github ( https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF/blob/master/fx3_firmware/src/bladeRF.c ) is MIT licensed
18<mIKEjONES> instead of redistributing the binaries, please take a look at how the debian package does its post-install, https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF/blob/master/debian/bladerf-firmware-fx3.postinst
18<mIKEjONES> please also see, https://github.com/Nuand/bladeRF/blob/master/debian/copyright#L18
20* Disconnected (20Connection reset by peer)
20<lkocman_>30 Hello mIKE I was already dead asleep
20<lkocman_>30 Will check, thank you!
20<lkocman_>30 Hmmm I'm checking the spec that we have https://build.opensuse.org/package/view_file/hardware:sdr/bladeRF/bladeRF.spec?expand=1 and seem slike it's using the repo that you're mentioning, I'll check why do we reference it in non-free then

So Debian downloads files in their post install script instead of packaging. That's super dirty. Also flagging the package as free software when it's actually not built from source is cheating. So the way the firmware binary blob is handled in openSUSE is correct.

Checked the web site btw, building the firmware requires a proprietary SDK (that even requires registering before download) so we can't build that from source easily. Who knows what gets bundled from that proprietary SDK into the blob.

The package is https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory:NonFree/bladeRF-fx3-firmware though. Could have MIT license instead but stay in :NonFree as it's not built from source

Let me have discussion with them and agree on something.
Would it make sense to discuss an option where we'd build against the binary-blob SDK, it it would be offered?

Right now I'd leave it as it is.

Cheers