Robert Millan wrote:
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 07:35:52AM +0100, Simon Kelley wrote:
Robert Millan wrote:
Package: atmel-firmware
Severity: serious
The following files aren't either .rom files or .h files as required by the
upstream license.
images/*.bin
images.usb/*.bin
The files are "binary image files" as specified by the license.
That's not accurate, the license reads:
/* Firmware is redistributed in object code only, specifically, only */
/* in two file formats: (a) .h header file; or (b) .rom binary image file; */
IANAL, but it seems to me the files should be .rom files.
What difference would it make? In fact the Debian project redistributes
.deb files (or .iso images, for that matter.) Since I can't put
atmel-firmware.rom into the package pool, by your interpretation Debian
cannot distribute this stuff at all.
Recall that in the part of my reply which you deleted, I stated that the
files have to have specific names ending in .bin once they are in the
/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware directory, since those names are hard-coded
into every copy of the Linux kernel which includes the atmel driver.
I think that the intention of the license is absolutely clear: it takes
serious pedantry to see a problem here.
Our interpretation of Atmel Corporation's intention is not relevant in court.
Of course our interpretation is relevant. Geeks (myself included) are
used to writing instructions and rules which get run on CPUs and CPUs
are dumb, so we get used to being very clear and covering every corner
case. But laws aren't like that: the fundamental unit used to interpret
laws is not a CPU, it's a "reasonable person". I contend that no
reasonable person could interpret Atmel's license other than to allow
the package as it stands.
Try this Gedanken-experiment: would you still consider the license to be
violated of the files were named *.rom in the package and then renamed
as *.bin by the postinst script? If so why do you think that a slightly
different way of achieving exactly the same result violates the license?
How about if the package contained the original C header files, and the
postinst script generated .bin files from those?
Atmel orignally released the firmware in the form of .h files which
include the copyright as a C comment. The purpose of the "binary image
file" clause is to allow the firmware to be distributed in the more
useful form of a binary image, which is neccessarily stripped of the
copyright notice in each file, provided that the copyright notice is
included in the _package_ containing the files. That's what second
paragraph is about.[1] This isn't guesswork on my part, it's firm
knowledge. I know because I put a large amount of personal effort into
kicking the legal department at Atmel into doing it.
My level of pedantry isn't either.
See my comment above about computers versus reasonable people. I think
you've fallen into that trap; it's very common around here.
Looks like we disagree on this. Please bring this up in debian-legal. If they
agree with you, I will find reasonable to close this bug.
CC'd
Cheers,
Simon.
[1] "Any reproduction of Firmware must contain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the below disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution"
