kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide
Rahul Sundaram
sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Mon Mar 24 01:52:36 UTC 2008
Les Mikesell wrote:
> David Woodhouse wrote:
>
>>> Not everyone agrees with your interpretation of the GPL, and plenty of
>>> people are happy to distribute binary blobs.
>>
>> Just for the record -- this is the licence you speak of 'interpreting':
>>
>> These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
>> identifiable sections of that work are NOT DERIVED from the
>> Program, and can be reasonably considered INDEPENDENT AND
>> SEPARATE WORKS in themselves, then this License, and its terms,
>> do not apply to those sections WHEN YOU DISTRIBUTE THEM AS
>> SEPARATE WORKS.
>>
>> But when you distribute the SAME SECTIONS AS PART OF A WHOLE
>> which is a work based on the Program, the DISTRIBUTION OF THE
>> WHOLE MUST BE ON THE TERMS OF THIS LICENSE, whose permissions
>> for other licensees extend to the ENTIRE WHOLE, and thus to
>> EACH AND EVERY PART REGARDLESS OF WHO WROTE IT.
>> Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or
>> contest your rights to work written entirely by you; rather, the
>> intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of
>> derivative OR COLLECTIVE WORKS based on the Program.
>> Personally, I can't find even a _wilful_ misinterpretation which permits
>> non-GPL'd firmware blobs to be included in the kernel itself, without
>> being completely crazy about it. But maybe that's just me.
>
> Do you think the firmware provided by some other vendor is somehow
> derived from or based on portion of the GPL'd kernel?
>
> Do you think it is part of the kernel-as-a-whole when it loads/runs
> completely separately on some other component? I don't see how you can
> have any interpretation other than it being an unrelated chunk that is
> conveniently aggregated with a loader to make a piece of hardware behave
> better. If you really believe firmware is a derivative of the kernel
> you wouldn't be able to run linux on anything with firmware in ROM
> either. Loading it as the kernel loads doesn't make it any more or less
> a part of the kernel work-as-a-whole.
Alexandre Oliva already said this is not a matter of licensing
compatibility but just licensing (ie) the firmware inside the kernel
doesn't have the equivalent source code. He hasn't claimed that firmware
inside the kernel is a GPL violation.
Rahul
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