On Thu, Nov 15, 2007 at 11:10:11AM -0500, al davis wrote: [...] > RMS has claimed that GPL is not appropriate for hardware. [...]
I think he said this in reference to the actual hardware design, not so much the firmware that runs on it. But the statement is really just as true of the firmware. Imagine the firmware running on your microcontroller-based refrigerator, which has no accessible user interface, and no way to get data in or out of the hardware without physically hacking it. What does it mean to make the software available to the user in this case? Even in the case of BSD-type licenses that require credit to be given "in the documentation accompanying the software", what documentation? Sure, you could stick it in the manual for the appliance, but that would be confusing to the average consumer. What if the embedded device is truly embedded in such a way that the consumer doesn't even realize there's a computing device present -- maybe it's embedded into the structure of their home in the form of, say, moisture sensors that detect water leaks. The homeowner probably won't even see a manual or any documentation for something like that. Maybe it's buried inside the intelligent LED light bulbs intended to replace incandescent bulbs. Even the LGPL (which is used by uClibc, for example) isn't really appropriate for this kind of thing, since you still need to make the source of the library itself available to the "users". That's just an obnoxious requirement for the manufacturer of those light bulbs, for example. The users will never take them up on it. Instead of using uClibc, they will just write their own code from scratch or purchase proprietary libraries. Admittedly, the light bulb example is a bit contrived, but I think it illustrates the point -- software is going to be increasingly embedded *everywhere*, and just for the sake of economic efficiency, it would be nice if it were largely based on free/open-source software, but the current licenses are not friendly to this sort of thing. So instead everybody reinvents the wheel, and as a result more bugs creep into your refrigerator. (And the development tools for those proprietary libraries are, of course, Windows-only, which isn't good for open-source either.) I would like to see uClibc in particular released under a more embedded-friendly license. Sorry to rant here, as it's not really relevant to gEDA. I should be ranting on the uClibc mailing list, I guess. I'm sure I wouldn't be the first. _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user