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Re: Debian USB Wifi



On Tue, 06 Jun 2023 09:46:53 +0200
davenull@tuxfamily.org wrote:

> Hello
> 
> On 2023-06-05 22:49, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >> I believe that there are at least some 11ac cards supported by the
> >> vanilla kernel and open source firmware:
> >> 
> >> https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k
> >> https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k/firmware
> > 
> > Oh so the Free ath10k firmwares have now grown support for 11ac?
> > Someone should tell Purism, because they still sell their Librem mini
> > with an ath9k 11n card and the reason is/was that it's the best
> > they could find without resorting to a proprietary blob :-(
> 
> 
> I don't see any info supporting that ath10k firmware is free. The repo 

Mea culpa. I had inferred from the fact that the firmware was available
from kernel.org and GitHub that it was free software, but that was
apparently an unwarranted assumption and I seem to have been mistaken.
Debian packages ath10k firmware in the package "firmware-atheros",
under "firmware-nonfree".

I apologize for the misinformation.

> mentionned in the ath10k wiki.kernel.org page¹, contains mainly (only? 
> I didn't clone it to automatically check filetype of every single file 
> in each (sub)directory) proprietary blobs,

You're right - I can't find any source files.

> And the licence² is cleanly a proprietary licence. The licence even 
> prohibits reverse engineering, while in Europe, reverse-engineering 
> **for interoperability purposes only** is **legally permitted**. ³.
> 
> 1. https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/
> 2. 
> https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/LICENSE.qca_firmware
> 3. Article 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of 
> the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer 
> programs : 
> https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32009L0024

> >         Stefan

-- 
Celejar


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