Arduino firmware permissible to include?

Dan HorĂ¡k dan at danny.cz
Sat May 25 08:05:54 UTC 2013


On Sat, 25 May 2013 09:59:00 +0200
Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini at redhat.com> wrote:

> 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.

better ask the Fedora legal list I think as this is more a legal
question than technical


		Dan


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