[linux-audio-dev] Draft position statement of AGNULA on ALSA firmware

[Andrea Glorioso]

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"