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

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(a)miu-ft.org>)g>). (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(a)lists.agnula.org> Best regards, -- Andrea Glorioso andrea.glorioso(a)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"