Arduino firmware permissible to include?

[Paolo Bonzini]

Il 23/05/2013 15:25, Peter Oliver ha scritto:
> Arduino is an electronics prototyping board, and also a GNU
> GPL2-licenced IDE for writing and uploading code to such boards.  Fedora
> has packages for the IDE.
> 
> Recent versions of the IDE include WiFi firmware for Arduino
> (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoWiFiShield).  The Arduino "source"
> bundles include the binary firmware.  Source code for the firmware is
> also included, but there are no build scripts, and the firmware is not
> built when the IDE itself is built.
> 
> Is it permissible to include this firmware in the Fedora packages?  My
> impression is that it's not firmware in the sense described at
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware, because
> it's not firmware for hardware on which Fedora runs.  Rather, I believe
> that it is content
> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Code_Vs_Content).
> 
> Without access to the build scripts (which the GNU GPL2specifically says
> must be included), do we even have a licence to redistribute the firmware?

The firmware is merely aggregated to the IDE, so the GNU GPLv2 doesn't
matter here.

The firmware license is definitely not free.  I don't know if you can
get an exception because it doesn't run on the CPU.  The safest bet is
to ask FESCo.

Paolo