Subject: [linux-audio-dev] Draft position statement of AGNULA on ALSA firmware
From: Andrea Glorioso (andrea.glorioso_AT_agnula.org)
Date: Fri Jun 11 2004 - 21:08:36 EEST
Dear all,
after a very busy period I finally managed to find the needed time and
concentration to write the first darft of AGNULA position on
distributing ALSA firmware.
To make a long story short, the final position I'm proposing is that
AGNULA *should* distribute such firmware, but should carefully explain
why it's doing it and how it thinks that this is not the optimal
solution.
I'd like all of you to comment on the following draft statement,
whether you find it acceptable or not.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++ THE AGNULA PROJECT POSITION ON ALSA FIRMWARE
For quite a long time, the ALSA project [0] has been providing a
reference architecture and top-quality Linux drivers for a wide
variety of sound cards. All the code of the core ALSA system and of
the drivers has been released under either the GNU GPL license or
under a Free Software license, as defined by the Free Software
Foundation.
The AGNULA project is very thankful to the ALSA team for allowing the
A/DeMuDi distribution to use and distribute their software.
However, AGNULA is facing a difficult problem dealing with a subtle
issue: firmware.
Many professional grade soundcards require "firmware" (hexadecimal
blobs of data which have to be "uploaded" on the hardware for it to do
work properly, or to work at all in some cases), which the ALSA
project distribute in a separate package.
The question arose whether AGNULA would be entitled to distribute such
firmware as part of its A/DeMuDi distribution. During its funded
lifetime as a European Commision IST project, AGNULA was bound to only
distribute Free Software as defined by the Free Software Foundation
guidelines; the participation of Free Software Foundation Europe as a
member of the AGNULA Consortium was meant to guarantee this specific
part of the agreement. After the end of the funded lifetime, AGNULA
has become a (mostly) volunteer project; however, FSFE has registered
the "AGNULA" trademark and allows it to be used only by projects which
fulfill the general goal of supporting Free Software, from both the
technical and the philosophical points of view.
Current AGNULA volunteers have, of course, no problem with FSFE
registering the trademark - on the contrary, we feel this is a useful
strategy to avoid our work being misused.
To make a long story short, AGNULA has reached the conclusion that it
*will* distribute the firmware needed to make some sound cards
properly work.
To make a short story long, let us explain our line of reasoning:
(1) The first question is whether we can legally distribute such
firmware at all, barring for a moment the problem of its
"freeness". The ALSA project has been given permission to
distribute it, and our investigation showed no proof that this
permission refers to the ALSA project and not to other parties; so
we concluded that we could legally distribute such firmware.
(2) The second question is whether such firmware is "software" (i.e. a
computer program) or "data". The distinction between the two is
very, very blurry. The position of AGNULA is that the firmware we
are discussing about can be actually considered software (i.e. a
computer program) in the sense that it is interpreted by a piece
of hardware to execute some operations.
(3) The third question is, given that we consider firmware as
software, what is the "preferred form for modification" of such
firmware. The wording we use is not random: it's the way the GNU
GPL license defines the "source code" of a program.
Now, if the "preferred form for modification" of said firmware is
editing the hex codes themselves, then we are actually distributing
the source together with the program.
Unfortunately, we are quite convinced (based on our personal
experience, and on us being overly cautious) that the "preferred form
for modification" of such firmware is not hacking on hexadecimal
values; we think the firmware is the result of some higher-level
language being compiled into the resulting "blob" (no more and no less
than what happens with "ordinary" computer programs).
Given (1), (2) and (3) we conclude that the firmware we are discussing
about can't actually be considered Free Software.
However, given that:
(4) without such firmware, most professional-grade sound cards won't
work;
(5) the Free Software community, and AGNULA specifically, has not
gained enough momentum in the audio field to be able to convince
any major sound card manufacturer that it should release the
source code of its firmware (supposing (3) is true, of course)
lest AGNULA won't distribute such firmware inside A/DeMuDi,
(6) the unwillingness by AGNULA to distribute such firmware would
actually *damage* Free Software, because we think most people -
who for years have been using proprietary software to do their pro
audio and sound work - will simply refuse to accept the extra
burden of having to download a separate package and configure it
outside the usual distribution mechanism;
(7) we feel that providing a downloader for such firmware would be a
hypocritical stance - "we don't give you X, but we give you an
easy way to get X". We don't see the point in acting this way.
the AGNULA project has decided that it *will* distribute the
alsa-firmware package in the next releases of its AGNULA/DeMuDi
distribution.
Please bear with this long message a bit more.
(8) We don't feel this is a completely satisfactory solution. We
think the user should be in complete control of the system s/he is
using, and the only way to get that is to have complete access to
the source code of the software s/he is using and the possibility
to modify and redistribute it without too much hassle.
Media Innovation Unit - Firenze Tecnologia (MIU-FT), itself a part
of the AGNULA team, is convinced that Free and Open Hardware is an
interesting line of research that should be further investigated,
and will allocate a part of its resources in the coming months to
understand the issues involved and the possible solutions.
Interested parties should contact MIU-FT technical coordinator
(Andrea Glorioso <sama_AT_miu-ft.org>).
(9) Although A/DeMuDi distributes jMax, a program which is in and by
itself Free Software but is currently depending on non-free Java
Runtime Environments implementations, we don't feel obliged or
compelled to distribute a non-free JRE because of our decision to
distribute ALSA firmware.
We feel the two situations are non-comparable: providing an
alternative to those parts of jMax which depend on a non-free JRE
(namely the GUI) is substantially easier, both technically and
legally, than writing replacement firmware for the sound cards
which need it.
(10) This decision on firmware *only* applies to ALSA firmware -
i.e. the firmware currently distributed by the ALSA project. We
reserve the right to decide, on a case by case basis, whether we
will distribute firmware which will be included into the ALSA
package in the future and/or firmware for other parts of a system
running our A/DeMuDi distributioon.
(11) We do know that the Debian project has taken a different route
than us. Although we are striving to make A/DeMuDi as much
integrated into Debian as possible, we want to reserve - in this
and in other occasion - the freedom to decide autonomously what
we feel is better for the advancement of Free Software.
On behalf of the AGNULA project,
Andrea Glorioso
[0] http://www.alsa-project.org/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Comments, criticisms, whatever should be sent to:
<users_AT_lists.agnula.org>
Best regards,
--
Andrea Glorioso andrea.glorioso_AT_agnula.org
AGNULA Technical Manager http://www.agnula.org/
M: +39 333 820 5723 F: +39 (0)51 930 31 133
"Libre Audio, Libre Video, Libre Software: AGNULA"
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