Support b43 driver family

[Ma Hsiao-chun]

b43: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

u-d-c is a nice way of installing drivers!

However, it doesn't treat b43 as an option for Broadcom wireless chips.

As documented by the b43 wiki, b43 has its advantages and disadvantages.
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Comparison_of_recent_drivers

So we'd give the users b43 as a choice.

From my own experience, sometimes b43 works better and sometimes worse.

b43-fwcutter source package of Debian/Ubuntu has helper script binary package for installing firmware needed by b43.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

We actually did have b43 support for quite a while (in jockey), but as the quality of the driver got worse and worse over time, and downloading the firmware is legally questionable at best, we disabled it.

So this is by and large a "wontfix" I'm afraid.

[Ma Hsiao-chun (mahsiaochun)]

"the quality of the driver got worse and worse over time", really?

I just switched one box from wl to b43 in order to make Hotspot work.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless also recommends trying b43 before wl.

"downloading the firmware is legally questionable at best"
Well, can we let user make the choice given some warning?

At the very least, even if u-d-c doesn't want to pull b43-firmware for users.
It would be nice if it can detect existing b43 usage and make driver switching easier.

As I'm using b43 and the WiFi is functioning, but u-d-c tells me that my device is not working.

[Ma Hsiao-chun (mahsiaochun)]

Again for the legal question.

The firmware README: http://paste.ubuntu.com/5728354/

It is from the GPL source of a wireless router.
So it should be legal to redistribute and manipulate.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

> It is from the GPL source of a wireless router.

Nope, that cannot be GPL. That's the Broadcom STA driver, i. e. exactly what we already have in the archive as bcmwl (the thing you are complaining about). So neither is that zip fully GPL, nor does it have any kind of license statement, nor does it have the b43 firmware.

[Rafał Miłecki (zajec5)]

> We actually did have b43 support for quite a while (in jockey), but as the quality of the driver got worse and worse over time

I'm sorry to hear that. We got some regressions with 802.11n cards, I've spent many hours to track them all, and we believe all of them are fixed (in current and stable kernels, including Ubuntu's one). Can you point me to any remaining regressions in b43? I'm not aware of any.

> and downloading the firmware is legally questionable at best, we disabled it.

You can't actually download the firmware, to be precise. Common practice is to include bash script for downloading Broadcom's official driver and call b43-fwcutter (open source tool, GPL AFAIR) to extract firmware from the driver. What part of this do you find illegal?

You provide web browsers which can be used for downloading illegal content.
You provide torrent clients which can be used for downloading/sharing illegal content.
Oh, and you provide TCP stack.
Is there a really difference?

[Adam Smith (adamsmith)]

Could this be solved by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/b43-fwcutter/+bug/1490212 ?

[Adam Smith (adamsmith)]

Regarding the legality of the firmware, note Ubuntu already include it in the linux-firmware-nonfree package and as described above jockey in 10.04 used to download it.