Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[Les Mikesell]

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  *      Derived from proprietary unpublished source code,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