kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Les Mikesell]

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.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com