On 10/14/2021 4:06 AM, Jon Brase wrote:
Oct 13, 2021 23:39:17 Jim Hall
<jhall[jh...@freedos.org]@freedos.org[jh...@freedos.org]
It appears that somewhere along the line, someone (at AMD?) had access
to the sources, probably in a larger source tree, and ran a batch job
or script to apply the "AMD" statement to a bunch of source files. And
that happened to catch these GPL and public domain source files. I
believe that was done in error. The original public domain and GPL
declarations trump the latter "AMD" statement.
The only issue I see here is if AMD added any code to the public domain files.
For the GPL files, the AMD violated the existing license by marking them as AMD
proprietary, whether they added anything or not, and the only way for them to
come back into compliance is to relicense the code under a GPL compatible
license. So the GPL files are clean in any circumstance.
For the public domain stuff, they can't claim copyright to anything that
existed in the files when they received them, but they can claim copyright to
anything that they added.
If the original files can be traced and it can be demonstrated that AMD added
nothing more than the copyright notices, then they're clean, otherwise it has
to be determined what code was added by AMD, and that has to be stripped out.
I don't think there's an issue here, for several reasons, besides the
ones mentioned above, any code added to the files (assuming there was
some) I'm pretty sure is required to be released back to the community
anyway. I'm no lawyer, and various GPL licenses have different
restrictions, but I'm thinking GPLV1 required any code added be released
back to the community at large, which is why a second (then a third)
version of the license was created.
Of course, it's been many years since I read the first version of the
GPL license, so I could be all wrong about it, but for some reason, that
seems to stick with me.
And, generally, even if there is proprietary code involved, (doubtful),
in general (obviously, not always), AMD can only recoupe losses as a
result of the code being used for commercial gain, which would be real
hard to prove since freedos is free, and no monitary gain is made as a
result of including said code.
I'm sure folks could argue this six ways from Sunday, and make all kinds
of cases for just about anything they want, but has anyone actually made
an attempt to ask AMD their thoughts on the matter?
Barring getting an all clear from AMD, I'm personally convinced the only
way forward is to behave as previously mentioned, by removing said
notices, and leaving it all opensource. If they have a problem, /I'm
sure they''ll say something. I can't honestly see that happening
though, and if they do, then you'll know exactly what needs removed to
solve the problem./
/That's a win in everyone's book./
//
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