[U-Boot] [PATCH] SBx81CFC960: embed Fman microcode in the bootloader

[Timur Tabi]

Chris Packham wrote:
> Good point. I got the firmware out of the SDK that came with our
> P2041RDB. I believe the intent was that the Fman microcode is written to
> a reserved flash block and downloaded to the frame manager by the OS
> when needed. As a Freescale customer I would actually prefer to have the
> source released under the GPL and build everything into the u-boot image.

For the record, Freescale considers embedding Fman or QE microcode into a
"GPL binary" (e.g. a compiled U-boot or Linux image) to be a GPL
violation.  I'm sure there might be some linker or compiler tricks that
some people would say are not GPL violations, but I'm not going to debate
any of that.  I'm just stating what our official position is.

Having said that, I do realize that Freescale still ships some QE firmware
binaries as C header/source files that are supposed to be #included into
customer code.  Unfortunately, not all Freescale developers have gotten
the message.

-- 
Timur Tabi
Linux kernel developer at Freescale