Broadcom and Linux
Some open source drivers are available and included in the Linux kernel source tree for the 802.11b/g/a/n family of wireless chips Broadcom produces. Since the release of the 2.6.26 kernel some Broadcom chips have kernel support but require external firmware to be built.
In 2003, the Free Software Foundation accused Broadcom of not complying with the GNU General Public License as Broadcom distributed GPL code in a driver for its 802.11g router chipset without making that code public. The chipset was adopted by Linksys which was later purchased by Cisco. Cisco eventually published source code for the firmware for its WRT54G wireless broadband router.
In 2012, the Linux Foundation listed Broadcom as one of the Top 10 companies contributing to the development of the Linux Kernel for 2011, placing it in the top 5 percent of an estimated 226 contributing companies. The foundation's Linux Kernel Development report also noted that, during the course of the year, Broadcom submitted 2,916 changes to the kernel. In October, Broadcom's commitment to the free software community was underlined when the previously proprietary parts of the Raspberry Pi userland were released under a BSD-style license, making it "the first ARM-based multimedia SoC with fully functional, vendor-provided (as opposed to partial, reverse engineered) fully open-source drivers", although this claim has not been universally accepted.
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