On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 07:00:40PM +0800, Jonathan Wilson wrote: > It would be impossible to expect that every change to a FOSS package > (kernel, busybox, whatever else) be vetted to make sure its legally > clean and releasable before it was pushed to the internal tree.
That has nothing to do with F/OSS in particular, they need to perform this diligance before incorporating *any* code in their product. > devices, it would have been impossible to get anything done if your > team's part of the software was FOSS and you had to get every change > signed off by legal/copyright/licensing people before pushing it) Frankly if that is the case, they have no business using F/OSS. They know *in advance* they are required to release the corresponding source code to the binaries. That's the price they pay for not having to write everything from scratch. Ten years ago they may have been able to plead ignorance, but today? Come on. > And its not just code that the manufacturer has licensed from a 3rd > party and has to be careful about how they release it. Licenses and > NDAs for hardware chips and such contain rules about how much > information the company using the chip is allowed to disclose. ....Then they can write their whole system from scratch, and not freeload off of others' hard work. > Licenses for software technology and patents (e.g. proprietary file > systems) might contain restrictions on distributing that > information. Regulatory reasons might make sharing the source code > hard. The GPL's requirements are clear. If you don't grant downstream users the same rights as you were given, then you're not allowed to re-distribute that GPL software. It really is that simple. > Getting all the legal things right to make sure that the source code > is in compliance with the FOSS licenses it is releases under AND > with all the other licenses, NDAs, contracts and agreements the > manufacturer may have signed that pertain to the device (or might > pertain to the device) is hard and takes time. I don't disagree, but I should point out that the time to do this is *before* you start shipping product, not months afterwards! - Solomon -- Solomon Peachy pizza at shaftnet dot org Delray Beach, FL ^^ (email/xmpp) ^^ Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
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