From owner-freebsd-stable Thu May 3 4:12:51 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from eve.framatome.fr (eve.framatome.fr [195.101.50.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3FA5F37B422; Thu, 3 May 2001 04:12:44 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ubc@paris.framatome.fr) Received: from localhost (ubc@localhost) by eve.framatome.fr (8.11.2/8.11.2) with ESMTP id f43BCd682369; Thu, 3 May 2001 13:12:39 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from ubc@eve.framatome.fr) Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 13:12:39 +0200 (CEST) From: Claude Buisson To: Wayne Pascoe Cc: , Subject: Re: FYI: GPL Linux driver for Alcatel ADSL SpeedTouch USB In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On 3 May 2001, Wayne Pascoe wrote: > Claude Buisson writes: > > > Hello, > > > > As I have not seen this info on a FreeBSD list, I think it could be > > useful to know that there exists an Open Source (GPL) Linux driver > > for the Alcatel ADSL SpeedTouch USB modem being developed outside Alcatel > > (no kernel patch nor special library needed). > > Actually, your information is incorrect on several fronts. For > starters only a portion of the driver is open source under the GPL > licence. The majority ( and most of the important bits) are in a > closed source module. This driver also (from what I've read so far) > only works under the 2.4 kernel series. > As I understand the code: This software needs the Alcatel drivers (Windows OR Linux) to extract the microcode. This software runs also on 2.2.17 kernels > > This is not an open sourced driver and the myth that it is, should not > be perpetuated. If it were true open source, there would be a driver > for FreeBSD by now, because we would have had a starting point. > > Companies that release these kinds of drivers for GNU/Linux and then > claim to be heroes of the revolution just annoy me. At least Alcatel > didn't brag about it. They just did it to get people off their back :) > > As I found only pointers to the Alcatel code in the lists, I thought that it could help for FreeBSD work to have another example (without kernel patches and/or proprietary libraries). This is not made by a "company" and nobody is claiming to be a hero. > -- > - Wayne Pascoe > E-mail: wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk > Phone : +44 (0) 20 7544 4668 > Mobile: +44 (0) 788 431 1675 > Claude Buisson To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message