[CentOS] CentOS 6 supported hardware

Wed Jul 6 20:36:39 UTC 2011
Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk>

On 06/07/11 13:32, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 05, 2011 06:19:58 PM Ned Slider wrote:
>> On 05/07/11 10:09, Ljubomir Ljubojevic wrote:
>>> Broadcom has license restrictions so even ElRepo guys wont create rpms,
>>> but there is howto, even for CentOS 5:
>>> http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops/Wireless/Broadcom
>
>> We (elrepo) certainly aren't prepared to create and redistribute binary
>> "kmod-wl" RPMS given the Broadcom licensing restrictions.
>
> For Fedora the RPMfusion 'nonfree' repo has kmod-wl and friends.  An EPEL-based RPMfusion for EL is in testing, but kmod-wl and friends are not there yet.
>

Hi Lamar,

Yes, I see a couple of other repos are shipping kmod-wl binaries. We 
noted that at the time we took legal advice to establish if we had 
possibly misinterpreted the License. They obviously don't share our 
concerns about the licensing terms for redistribution (or maybe they 
just didn't read them too closely) :-/

Personally I'd rather try to find a way to pressurise Broadcom into 
doing the right thing by the Linux community rather than support (IMHO) 
draconian licensing restrictions... but somehow I doubt Broadcom really 
care that much. Other vendors find a way to license their non-free 
content in a less restrictive way that permits unencumbered 
redistribution. Shame, as Broadcom adapters seem particularly prevalent 
on AMD-based laptops. I bought an Intel-based laptop where pretty much 
everything works with CentOS out of the box :-/