[Fedora-legal-list] Linux firmware

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Apr 29, 2009, "Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com> wrote:

> On 04/29/2009 03:06 PM, Alexandre Oliva wrote:
>> Say I create two works A and B.
>> 
>> I publish A under a permissive license.
>> 
>> I publish B under a license that prohibits its combination with A.
>> 
>> Per your reasoning, you're entitled to publish a combination of A and B.

> If you create work A that is dependent on work B (which you also
> created)

False assumption.  We're talking about copyright notices in two separate
drivers, one unrelated with the other.  Even if the drivers were somehow
related, I'm pretty sure the driver B is not derived from the firmware
in driver A.


The one situation in which there are derived works is that the driver B
is derived from Linux, but then it sets forth an additional restriction,
which is incompatible with the GPL that governs the creation and
distribution of derived works.


> Keep in mind that we're still talking hypotheticals here.

No, we're not.  You think I made up those license snippets?

I'm talking about two specific network interface driversf

grep for the license notices I posted to find them in the Linux 2.6.29
source tree.  (The firmware in driver A moved into firmware/ in
2.6.30-pre, but I haven't checked how or even whether the license
notices were adjusted)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva, freedom fighter    http://FSFLA.org/~lxoliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer