Hello all, Let's paste dissension lie in the paste, i promise to be reasonable in any further dealying with the people on this list, and apologize for the rudeness i may have shown in the past, be it justified or not.
I am in the process of writing a new firmware flasher for the pegasos powerpc motherboard (http://www.pegasosppc.com). I am also considering putting this tool under the GPL, which would be best and easy, but there are a certain amount of problems with this approach. But first a few detailed explanations. The tool will flash the firmware (like the x86 bios) of the motherboard, and said firmware contains everything needed to bring the box up and more. The firmware in question is (still but i am working on it) non-free, as not only do we not own the original copyright (original code bought from codegen), but many people have contributed to it and not all would like to open source it, not counting the NDA problems linked to the programing specs of certain low level devices, but i guess this is the case for most hardware we all use. Now, the pegasos is a CHRP machine, and thus uses OpenFirmware, which knows how to execute an ELF file. My original plan was to produce a project which could be put in an ELF file together with the firmware in question, and then simply booted from the OpenFirmware console. My understanding of this is that neither the firmware constitute a derived work from the flasher, nor the flasher constitute a derived work of the firmware. The fact that they are individually packaged in the same elf binary does not constitute a linking act, nor a derivation/modification act, but mere aggregation, and is thus not a problem for the GPL. Is this analysis true ? The GPL says : 0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you". which seems to me to be saying that to be a derivative work, one of them must contain code from the other (or use it in the library case), but the firmware is independent from the flasher and vice-versa. Is this analysis true and correct ? That said, the flasher program is itself using the OF methods of the existing firmware but since it is using the installed version and not the one it is flashing, one can consider that the OF methods are indeed covered by the GPL clause 3) exception for stuff normally included in the system, altough one wonders what happens when running the flasher two times in a row, since then it will be making calls to the binary firmware it is using. Also having this flasher with embedded firmware on a CD which is distributed with each board or machine sold may break the exception to the exception, right ? The GPL says : However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. The FSF GPL FAQ says : http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLInProprietarySystem However, in many cases you can distribute the GPL-covered software alongside your proprietary system. To do this validly, you must make sure that the free and non-free programs communicate at arms length, that they are not combined in a way that would make them effectively a single program. The difference between this and "incorporating" the GPL-covered software is partly a matter of substance and partly form. The substantive part is this: if the two programs are combined so that they become effectively two parts of one program, then you can't treat them as two separate programs. So the GPL has to cover the whole thing. If the two programs remain well separated, like the compiler and the kernel, or like an editor and a shell, then you can treat them as two separate programs--but you have to do it properly. The issue is simply one of form: how you describe what you are doing. Why do we care about this? Because we want to make sure the users clearly understand the free status of the GPL-covered software in the collection. If people were to distribute GPL-covered software calling it "part of" a system that users know is partly proprietary, users might be uncertain of their rights regarding the GPL-covered software. But if they know that what they have received is a free program plus another program, side by side, their rights will be clear. and : http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation Mere aggregation of two programs means putting them side by side on the same CD-ROM or hard disk. We use this term in the case where they are separate programs, not parts of a single program. In this case, if one of the programs is covered by the GPL, it has no effect on the other program. Combining two modules means connecting them together so that they form a single larger program. If either part is covered by the GPL, the whole combination must also be released under the GPL--if you can't, or won't, do that, you may not combine them. What constitutes combining two parts into one program? This is a legal question, which ultimately judges will decide. We believe that a proper criterion depends both on the mechanism of communication (exec, pipes, rpc, function calls within a shared address space, etc.) and the semantics of the communication (what kinds of information are interchanged). If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program. If modules are designed to run linked together in a shared address space, that almost surely means combining them into one program. By contrast, pipes, sockets and command-line arguments are communication mechanisms normally used between two separate programs. So when they are used for communication, the modules normally are separate programs. But if the semantics of the communication are intimate enough, exchanging complex internal data structures, that too could be a basis to consider the two parts as combined into a larger program. One wonders about the definition of modules, and one can consider that in this case there is no communication altogether between the the two parts, at least not when the code is run, and later once the firmware is installed, the communication method between the two being the IEEE 1275 standard, so there is no surprises. Additionally, the flasher program, or rather the flasher .o, which can be linked with a firmware object and produce a flasheable ELF file can easily enough be distributed in debian/main, and if it contains the firmware, it could be distributed in non-free if the licence on the firmware allowed it. Not that it would really make sense, since distribution is better done on the manufacturers web server, but still. Friendly, Sven Luther -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
