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List:       fedora-devel-list
Subject:    Re: Am I allowed to package this?
From:       Hans de Goede <hdegoede () redhat ! com>
Date:       2018-09-14 17:37:46
Message-ID: d8504692-3974-b943-77e4-ad2de9a1261d () redhat ! com
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Hi,

On 09/13/2018 07:59 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> On Thu, 2018-09-13 at 16:07 +0200, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > On 10-09-18 14:40, Abhiram Kuchibhotla wrote:
> > > According to the LICENSE file in their git repo, the code in the repo seems to \
> > > be gplv2. Not sure if that proves anything. I'll do the licensecheck -r later \
> > > and update you guys. 
> > > On Mon 10 Sep, 2018, 6:08 PM Richard Shaw, <hobbes1069@gmail.com \
> > > <mailto:hobbes1069@gmail.com>> wrote: 
> > > On Mon, Sep 10, 2018 at 7:27 AM Rex Dieter <rdieter@math.unl.edu \
> > > <mailto:rdieter@math.unl.edu>> wrote: 
> > > Jan Rybar wrote:
> > > 
> > > > Hi Abhiram,
> > > > 
> > > > you can make COPR. No one asks, no harm done, everyone's happy.
> > > 
> > > I don't think copr is appropriate either,
> > > https://docs.pagure.org/copr.copr/user_documentation.html#faq
> > > 
> > > To me, makes it pretty clear that if it can't be in fedora, it can't be in
> > > copr either.
> > > 
> > > 
> > > You need to go through the code (maybe use licensecheck -r to help) to see if \
> > > all the code is acceptable. If so I'll defer to Neal on the COPR acceptability. \
> > > Another alternative is until formal support is added to the kernel you can look \
> > > at packaging it in RPM Fusion. If it's truly FOSS but just not acceptable \
> > > because it's a kernel module it can go in the Free repository. If it's using \
> > > proprietary code (even if the project is GPL licensed) then as long as it's \
> > > redistributable, it can go in the Non-Free repository.
> > 
> > 
> > This looks like a standard realtek driver which realtek creates for Android \
> > devices or some such. The code is not pretty (I really wish realtek would start \
> > contributing proper drivers to the mainline kernel) but it usually is all GPL \
> > licensed, except for the firmware for the NIC. I don't see firmware in the git \
> > repo, so the code may need to be adjusted to use the kernels firmware-load \
> > mechanism (I assume it has the firmware embedded atm).
> > 
> > The firmware files themselves may be distributed under this license:
> > https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/LICENCE.rtlwifi_firmware.txt
> >  
> > Note I did not check the files in the git repo, I just took a quick peek
> > that it is a "standard" out of tree realtek driver.
> > 
> > Also IANAL and TINLA.
> 
> I also have to use this driver for a USB dongle that works very well
> ... when I remember to check dkms didn't fail to build on kernel
> upgrade ...
> 
> There is no firmware needed apparently, but my dongle doesn't work with
> driver 5.2 which is the latest, so maybe a firmware is needed but the
> driver itself doesn't load it ?
> 
> It would be really nice to have this driver in the kernel though as a
> huge amount of cheap dongles use this chipset family, what would be the
> process to get it in ?

You can submit it for inclusion into drivers/staging, there are already
some realtek drivers for other chipsets there for similar reasons.

Real inclusion would require a complete rewrite of the driver mostly.

Regards,

Hans
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