Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi debian-legal, ... I've trimmed -release, as luk suggested it's unwelcome there.
> [...] The real problem is that there are a certain > amount of firmware in the kernel, embedded in the drivers, which have no > license notice whatsoever, and as thus fall implicitly under the common GPL > license of the linux kernel. The audit from Larry lists some 40+ such firmware > blobs. > > There is some claims that some of those blobs represent just register dumps, > but even then one could argue that the hex blobs doesn't in any way represent > the prefered form of modification, but rather some kind of register > name/number and value pair. > > So, the RMs are making claims that those sourceless GPLed drivers don't cause > any kind of distribution problem, while i strongly believe that the GPL clause > saying that all the distribution rights under the GPL are lost if you cannot > abide by all points, including the requirement for sources. I'd defer to Larry Doolittle on this one, but I think unless we have some reason to think there is another form used as source code, it's fine to consider the only codes our source code - for all we know, it was written that way. Best of all would be to get clarifications of what type each firmware is, but I doubt that's easy in all cases. However, if we strongly suspect that we don't have a valid permission to modify, distribute and so on, run a mile. > Since i am seen as not trusthy to analyze such problems, i think to deblock > this situation, it would be best to have a statement from debian-legal to back > those claims (or to claim i am wrong in the above). debian-legal is a mailing list. It is not easy for it to make a statement itself. Hope that helps, -- MJR/slef My Opinion Only: see http://people.debian.org/~mjr/ Please follow http://www.uk.debian.org/MailingLists/#codeofconduct -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
