In message [ref],Meelis Roos writes:

2.5.1 does not seem to contain the firmware.

oops -- i didnt commit it to the repo.

does not have to redo the detective work I am doing. Packaging it along 
with linux-atm packages (atm-tools in Debian) does not seem correct, so 
do we need to make a special firmware package out of it or just add to 
some other firmware repo that is packaged already?

i dont care which happens really.  i would to think it is part of
atm-tools since the fore200e driver really isnt useful with the
atm tools.

What's the licence of the firmware anyway - unknown likely?

it says the firmware is gpl.  look at fore200e_firmware_copyright
in one of the old kernel distros.

And we can probably remove drivers/atm/fore200e_pca_fw.c if we 
distribute the firmware out of kernel tree.

i dont think it is in the current net-next-2.6 tree?