David Schmitt wrote:
On Thursday 07 April 2005 09:25, Jes Sorensen wrote:
> [snip] I got it from Alteon under a written agreement stating I > could distribute the image under the GPL. Since the firmware is > simply data to Linux, hence keeping it under the GPL should be just > fine.
Then I would like to exercise my right under the GPL to aquire the source code for the firmware (and the required compilers, starting with genfw.c which is mentioned in acenic_firmware.h) since - as far as I know - firmware is coded today in VHDL, C or some assembler and the days of hexcoding are long gone.
First, there is *NOT* any requirement in the GPL at all that requires making compilers available. Otherwise it would not be possible, for instance, have a Visual Basic GPL'd application. And yes, it is possible.
Second, up until the present day I have personal experience with hardware producers that do not have enough money to buy expensive toolchains and used a lot of hand-work to code hardware parameters. So, at least for them, hand-hexcoding-days are still going.
HTH,
Massa
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