Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[max]

David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 10:26 -0400, max wrote:
>> David Woodhouse wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2008-06-18 at 09:07 -0400, max wrote:
>>>> David Woodhouse wrote: 
>>>>> Along with the quotes from one of its authors, who also happens to be
>>>>> the overall network driver maintainer for Linux, and has stated that
>>>>> each driver and its firmware are 'intimately tied... pieces of a single,
>>>>> cohesive whole'.
>> So the driver and its firmware are indistinct from the whole? You cannot 
>> tell where the driver and firmware begin and end?
> 
> You can't easily tell them apart in the kernel image, no. It's a bit
> easier in the driver source, of course.
> 
> And of course even if you _can_ still identify the separate sections,
> that doesn't mean the GPL wouldn't apply to them. When the GPL talks
> about the independent sections which it extends to cover, it actually
> refers to them as "_identifiable_ sections of [the collective] work".
> 
> Merely being able to _identify_ the various parts isn't sufficient to
> claim that they are being distributed 'as separate works'.
> 
> When you see a book of short stories, do you claim that it's not a
> collective work just because you can tell where one ends and the next
> one starts?
> 
>>>> Why or how have they become "intimately tied"?
>>> That's a question you'd have to direct to the author of that file, who
>>> said that they were. He ought to know.
>>>
>> You based your argument around something you haven't confirmed?
> 
> Not at all; it doesn't _have_ to be 'intimately tied' for the GPL to
> apply to the whole work; my argument isn't at all based on the fact that
> they are 'intimately tied'.
> 
> I think it's fairly obvious that what we're distributing is a single
> cohesive whole which combines both GPL'd kernel code and the firmware.
> The argument that they are actually being distributed "as separate
> works" is fairly insane, and the claim that it is "mere aggregation on a
> volume of a storage or distribution medium" is also extremely
> far-fetched, IMO.
> 
> To call it 'intimately tied' is an even stronger assertion, and I was
> merely pointing out that that's the publicly stated opinion of an expert
> in the field (of these drivers), who has actually _created_ a number of
> these combined works of driver+firmware. The original copy is here:
> 	http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg65908.html
> cf.	http://www.spinics.net/lists/netdev/msg65919.html
> 
  Thanks for the links, I will see if I can't put them to good use.

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