Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

Alexandre Oliva aoliva at redhat.com
Mon Jun 9 17:59:23 UTC 2008


On Jun  9, 2008, Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Firmware that happens to be aggregated for convenient delivery and
> installation is no more a part of the GPL'd work than firmware that is
> already in your machine

That's missing the point.  It's not so much about the firmware, it's
about the GPLed work that depends on it.  If you can't "just take the
firmware out", and there's no way to obtain the GPL'ed
allegedly-separate work, how could the claim of 'mere aggregation'
hold any water?  Aggregation of what separate works?  Where are they?

> No, the GPL applies to components that actually are parts of a work as
> whole or derivatives.  Firmware is something separate, just carried
> along for the ride.

No, your honor, this is not a book that I printed for sale.  It's just
a bunch of pages from unrelated works that I stapled/bound together in
large quantities and offered to book retailers in exchange for pieces
of paper of a different color.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}
FSFLA Board Member       ¡Sé Libre! => http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}




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