[Fwd: Re: Opinion: NVIDIA drivers are a Good Thing [tm]]

[Alexandre Oliva]

On May 18, 2004, Rui Miguel Seabra <rms at 1407.org> wrote:

> If this is true, then it should be considered a bug. I'll investigate
> later...

You're not required to accept the GNU GPL to run the code.  The GNU
GPL explicitly says that anything but copying, distribution and
modification are outside of its scope, and that the act of running the
program is not restricted.

If you have to accept the terms of the GNU GPL in order to run the
program, that's a bug.  But then, by the time you get to firstboot,
you've already run a lot of code, and you can easily skip running
firstboot, for example, by performing a kickstart install.  I haven't
seen firstboot running for quite a few releases :-)

That said, if firstboot presents you with the GNU GPL and shuts the
system down if you don't agree with it, that's a bug.  If it's some
other license (e.g., /usr/share/doc/fedora-release-*/eula.txt), then
it's ok, since that's what sets the terms of use of the collection of
software called Fedora Core.


#include <std/IANAL>

-- 
Alexandre Oliva             http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}