[conspire] kernel crash reported // for wifi ?

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Mon, 2012-06-04 at 17:52 -0700, Rick Moen wrote:
> For example:  madwifi, which is an open-source driver that is a
> wrapper
> into which you insert a proprietary 'HAL' (Hardware Abstraction
> Layer) 
> binary firmware piece.  You've attempted that driver, and you've also
> attempted the newer ath5k driver for Atheros chips that is intended to
> take the place of madwifi and no longer requires the binary HAL piece.
> 
The HAL was later re-released under a free license, so either driver is
possible without a taint, and they mostly overlap in chipset support.
Still, there are a few chipsets for which one or the other is far
preferable, so YMMV. OpenWrt still uses MadWifi rather than ath5k for
most purposes, but with a HAL that was forked from an earlier
proprietary version under NDA and remains proprietary.