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Revision as of 10:31, 16 June 2009 by Peter (talk | contribs) (narrowed required firmware list)

Fedora Firmware Special Interest Group

Mission

Goal: to get all legally available firmware needed to get devices to work packaged for / in Fedora so that a users devices which require firmware will just work

We aim to accomplish this goal through a variety of activities:

  • Creating packages of firmware
  • Contact manufacturers asking them under which conditions their firmware may be redistributed
  • Contact manufacturers requesting them to modify their firmware redistribution conditions, to make them Fedora compatible


Available firmware

Tools for loading/extracting/dealing with firmware

  • alsa-tools-firmware - tools for uploading firmware to some soundcards
  • b43-fwcutter - firmware extraction tool for Broadcom wireless driver
  • bcm43xx-fwcutter - firmware extraction tool for Broadcom wireless drive
  • fxload - firmware download to EZ-USB devices
  • isight-firmware-tools - Firmware extraction tools for Apple Built-in iSight camera

Firmware being packaged

  • bluez-firmware - Bluetooth firmware distributed by the BlueZ project
  • kernel-firmware - firmware files for use with Linux kernel
  • openfwwf - Open FirmWare for Broadcom 43xx series WLAN chip

Firmware currently missing from Fedora

Notice that this is just a list of firmware which we would like to see in Fedora, firmware in this list has NOT been checked yet for proper licensing.

Networking Devices

  • 3Com Bluetooth Wireless PC Card 3CRWB6096
  • bcm43xx
  • Thomson SpeedTouch 330 USB
  • sil (for prism and prism_pci)

Multimedia Devices

  • AV7110 based DVB cards ( link )
  • OREN or51211 and 51132 demodulators ( link )
  • various USB TV devices ( link )
  • R5U87x based webcams ( link )

Orphaned Packages Needing Maintainers

  • No currently orphaned firmware packages

Packagers/Reviewers/People interested

Packaging guidelines

In addition to the standard Packaging/Guidelines , it is imported to realise that firmware does not need to be under a free software / oss license. As long as it may be freely redistributed without restriction, it may be packaged.


List of firmware which we can NOT package


References