On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 09:36:24AM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > > This is the answer I was given by lawyers. The analogy they use is > an interesting but sensible one. If I add a chapter to a book it is > clearly a derivative work, if I bundle the one work with a second > pamphlet containing the chapter I wrote then it is not.
It seems digging up some case law on the matter would be better than using analogies. Firmware could already be considered to be the "pamphlet" that is bundled with the "book" (the driver) because the firmware is not part of the driver in terms of functionality; it happens to be "bundled" with the driver because that is the most convenient way to get it into the hardware. Execution of the driver code never reaches the firmware and could not because it is not encoded in the instruction set of the host that the driver is running on. Of course, if the legal advice you refer to was specifically aimed at the firmware scenario, where you have a blob of who-knows-what that does not execute on the host embedded into a driver binary, then I'm not one to argue with that. > I don't think its "zealots" so much as appropriate legal practice. In > the Linux case we now have a good hotplug firmware loading interface > and drivers can practically ask for specific firmware. It also reduces > the unswappable kernel size Sure. I won't argue with people that are making the existing systems more flexible. My beef is mainly that a lot of people are considering sourceless firmware to be outside the DFSG, which amounts to an inconvenience to users for a dubious political gain. But that is off-topic for dri-devel probably. -- Ryan Underwood, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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