HSF and other winmodems/linmodems, continued

[thully at umich.edu]

I posted a question regarding the addition of winmodem support to Hoary
(with the drivers in "restricted").  I have a Conexant HSF winmodem
that is integrated in my ThinkPad T42, and I use it often as I have no
home broadband (I use my wi-fi at hotspots often though).  The drivers for
this modem are proprietary (and full functionality costs money).  However,
it seems that the no-cost limited version of this driver plus drivers for
some other winmodems like SmartLink, Lucent, and a few others could be
distributed
in restricted.  I do not have experience packaging drivers like these, so I am
unable to do this by myself - however, SmartLink drivers are already in Debian
(non-free part in non-free) and HSF modems also have a deb package available
from linuxant.com which currently works on Ubuntu.

Could it be possible for someone inside Ubuntu to
1) Contact Linuxant about the possibility of including the drivers - as
the license agreement is a little confusing
2) Add the smartlink drivers to main
3) Look into other modems (lucent/agere, etc.) and the possibility of including
these
4) Try to autodetect these modems in the install

I would do this if I could - but 1) I have no experience packaging - and
certainly not packaging for a popular Linux distribution and 2) As I am not an
Ubuntu Developer, I can't contact Linuxant and ask about the license.

This would be in my opinion very good in Ubuntu (to include winmodem drivers).