Re: 04/04: gnu: Add fwupd.

[Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com>]

Hello Denis,

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli <GNUtoo@cyberdimension.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, 31 Aug 2022 09:26:21 -0400
> Maxim Cournoyer <maxim.cournoyer@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > commit 23152ff70f0ed4966d8207846f54c793d7cb4f86
>> > Author: Petr Hodina <phodina@protonmail.com>
>> > AuthorDate: Tue Jan 4 06:58:51 2022 +0100
>> >
>> >     gnu: Add fwupd.
>> >     
>> >     * gnu/packages/firmware.scm (fwupd): New variable.
>> >     
>> >     Signed-off-by: Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org>
>> 
>> Just a quick question: does this tool talks to a remote server that
>> serves non-free software as well as free one?  If so, it'd need to be
>> patched to comply with the FSDG.
> It does.
>
> By default it at least uses the LVFS repository which has nonfree
> software. I don't remember if it also has other repositories or if
> there was a way to easily download updates from the repository
> without fwupd or LVFS.
>
> It is at least possible to search for specific software in LVFS at this
> address: https://fwupd.org/lvfs/search?value=microcode
>
> You also have UEFI updates and so on there, so it's pretty clear that
> there is some nonfree software.
>
> And we actually have the opposite issue here: It is way harder to find
> firmware updates that are fully free and that they can at least in
> theory be built with 100% free software on top of FSDG compliant
> distributions.
>
> Maybe small free software firmwares like the colorhug firmware could be
> OK. Somebody would need to check the dependencies for build the
> firmware update.
>
> Bigger firmwares like with firmwares using Coreboot are probably not
> OK because while coreboot is under the GPL, to work on recent
> hardware nonfree software is likely to be used (like microcode updates,
> Intel FSP, nonfree AGESA, etc).

Thanks.

With this in mind, I've disabled the default "remotes", which seem to be
the metadata for specifying which remote server to interrogate for
firmware.  Users knowing what they want can enable them manually.

See commit 4d361a6b5147e3f91573e9d3c8c540a233e7e142.

Testers welcome!

Thanks,

Maxim