[Bug 541524] [NEW] BIOS shipped as binary blobs without source

[Colin Watson]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: qemu-kvm

<cjwatson> kirkland: ok, I'm lost now.  What BIOS source are we actually using in kvm, where's its source, and why are there binary blobs in the qemu-kvm package?
<kirkland> cjwatson: well, we have seabios in the archive now, but upstream qemu strongly recommended that we use the bios they've blessed and released in 0.12.3
<cjwatson> kirkland: we need to ship source for it
<cjwatson> it's not OK to have sourceless binary blobs in main
<kirkland> cjwatson: we runtime-depended on seabios for a while, but it caused a few bugs that we couldn't reproduce against upstream
<kirkland> cjwatson: agreed, this is an oversight
<cjwatson> IMO we should be building it too, and making sure we get the same output from doing so
<kirkland> cjwatson: open a bug; i'm onsite at dell today/tomorrow, onsite at eucalyptus all of next week; i'll try to find some time
<cjwatson> ok
<kirkland> cjwatson: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/397472/
<cjwatson> yep, saw that
<cjwatson> I understand the reasons, but we're wildly infringing our own policy here
<cjwatson> not to mention infringing copyright on the BIOSes, if this is LGPLed (it is, isn't it?)
<kirkland> cjwatson: i'm happy to revert that commit, and reopen https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/lucid/+source/vgabios/+bug/513273
<ubottu> Ubuntu bug 513273 in qemu-kvm "kvm with -vga std is broken since karmic" [Low,Fix released]
<cjwatson> I'm not asking for us to use vgabios specifically
<kirkland> cjwatson: -vga std is low on my wishlist, fwiw
<cjwatson> the separate source package or whatever
<cjwatson> I'm entirely OK with it being shipped by qemu-kvm if that's considered appropriate, but not as binary blobs - we need to ship the matching source

** Affects: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu)
     Importance: High
         Status: New

** Affects: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu Lucid)
     Importance: High
         Status: New

** Also affects: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu Lucid)
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

** Changed in: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu Lucid)
   Importance: Undecided => High

** Changed in: qemu-kvm (Ubuntu Lucid)
    Milestone: None => ubuntu-10.04-beta-2

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BIOS shipped as binary blobs without source
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/541524
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