Hello On 2023-06-05 22:49, Stefan Monnier wrote:
I believe that there are at least some 11ac cards supported by the vanilla kernel and open source firmware: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k/firmwareOh so the Free ath10k firmwares have now grown support for 11ac? Someone should tell Purism, because they still sell their Librem mini with an ath9k 11n card and the reason is/was that it's the best they could find without resorting to a proprietary blob :-(
I don't see any info supporting that ath10k firmware is free. The repo mentionned in the ath10k wiki.kernel.org page¹, contains mainly (only? I didn't clone it to automatically check filetype of every single file in each (sub)directory) proprietary blobs,
And the licence² is cleanly a proprietary licence. The licence even prohibits reverse engineering, while in Europe, reverse-engineering **for interoperability purposes only** is **legally permitted**. ³.
1. https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/2. https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/blob/master/LICENSE.qca_firmware 3. Article 6 of Directive 2009/24/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2009 on the legal protection of computer programs : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX%3A32009L0024
Stefan