Qualcomm Atheros has released the source code of firmware for two of its 802.11n wireless chips on GitHub.

"Finally I did it. I decided to point to an higher goal asking Dell to produce a free software laptop. I made a campaign in english and italian inviting all the people to ask Dell for a machine with coreboot, atheros wireless chipset and gnewsense preinstalled. Now I am asking your support..."

"...This week Atheros Communications has made another step forward in enabling their wireless products on Linux. Atheros has released their HAL used for their 802.11a/b/g devices under the ISC. The ISC (or Internet Systems Consortium) is a BSD-derived free software license that is supported by the Free Software Foundation..."

Linux overcame most of its former driver woes years ago except for one noticeable exception: Wi-Fi drivers. While many Wi-Fi cards and chipsets were Linux friendly, two major Wi-Fi chipset vendors, Atheros and Broadcom, kept their drivers proprietary. Now, things are changing. Atheros has released a true open-source driver for its latest 802.11n chipsets.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), provider of pro-bono legal services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), today announced that it has carefully reviewed the lineage of the open source Atheros wireless driver for Linux and determined which portions can be distributed under the ISC license (also known as the 2-clause BSD license).

An investigation by the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) has determined that OpenHAL -- which facilitates Linux wireless connections for LAN cards using Atheros Communications technology -- does not incorporate any elements that might infringe on copyrights held by Atheros.