[maemo-community] Proposal for community firmware images

[From: Niels Breet]

On Thu, December 18, 2008 00:10, Carsten Valdemar Munk wrote:
> Hey all,
Hi,
>
> As part of the community efforts to backport Fremantle components
> (Mer), there have been discussions on how the community can provide
> firmware images containing proprietary contents (nokia software, hardware
> firmware blobs, 3rd party?, etc.) and distribute these. I've posted to
> this mailing list to invite more input from the Maemo Community on how to
> deal with this problem.
>
> A proposal to deal with this problem could be to, allow/license/etc
> maemo.org, directed by the Maemo Community Council, elected by the Maemo
> Community, to do the following:
>
>
> * On their servers construct, based on build scripts provided by
> community developers, firmware images (FIASCO images, jffs images, etc.)
> containing the proprietary contents.
>
> * The resulting images will then be provided by the maemo.org servers.
>
>
> The resulting firmware images would only be downloadable through
> providing a valid MAC address for a Nokia Internet Tablet product and
> agreeing to a license covering the user's use of the firmware image, just
> like tablets-dev.nokia.com.
>

There is nothing stopping us doing this from a technical stand point. We
have most of the tools and servers in place. If we get the OK, I will
gladly work on this!

> The effect of this could be, through the maemo.org process, that the
> community could be able to remix the firmware images, backport Fremantle
> components without having to directly deal with licensing and could make
> it possible to provide alternative distributions for the tablets without
> them sacrificing hardware interfaces, etc.

I guess it is up to Quim and the guys from Nokia Legal to sort this out :)

>
> /Carsten V. Munk

--
Niels Breet
maemo.org webmaster