Fedora Freedom and linux-libre
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Mon Jun 16 00:38:47 UTC 2008
jeff wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
>> Whatever mechanical translations you can do to something will not
>> change its copyright status. If you make a tar file containing 2
>> different copyrighted works, they are still 2 separate works, but
>> there is nothing magic about tar's format that relates to this concept.
>
> But what is the copyright status of drivers/net/tg3.c? What lines are
> GPL (if they are) and which lines are not GPL? I don't mean this as a
> theoretical exercise, I mean this *literally*. If you read tg3.c it
> *ONLY* says:
>
> /*
> * tg3.c: Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet driver.
> *
> * Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 David S. Miller (davem at redhat.com)
> * Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003 Jeff Garzik (jgarzik at pobox.com)
> * Copyright (C) 2004 Sun Microsystems Inc.
> * Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Broadcom Corporation.
> *
> * Firmware is:
> * Derived from proprietary unpublished source code,
> * Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Broadcom Corporation.
> *
> * Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware
> * data in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright
> * notice is accompanying it.
> */
>
>
> It never mentions GPL *EXCEPT* here:
>
> MODULE_AUTHOR("David S. Miller (davem at redhat.com) and Jeff Garzik
> (jgarzik at pobox.com)");
> MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet driver");
> MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");
>
>
> But tg3.o as distributed by RedHat/Fedora when it's compiled is *NOT* a
> GPL .o, it has the proprietary data in it. It isn't separate at all
> (like some firmware, say intel wireless, which is a completely separate
> file).
>
> I look at tg3.c and I can't tell where this "aggregation" begins and
> ends. It's the *SAME FILE*. Can you clearly say which line numbers are
> GPL and which line numbers are not GPL?
I don't know much about kernel drivers and I don't think ordinary humans
are expected to. I'd approach the question more mechanically, on the
same order as trying to establish if the elements within a tar file are
separate things, or if the files represented within an iso image are
separate things. If the compiler stores in a form that the loader can
identify and download to the correct device, I'd be convinced that it is
a separate thing regardless of any intermediate mechanical
transformations or representations.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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