Bernd, If I design a proprietary electronic circuit, I expect others to respect my ownership of my design. To expect this respect I have to give equal respect to others work. I am more then happy to respect the various terms that you and others put upon their creative work. My problem has been the lack of clarity. And I thank Stuart for his effort to settle these issues. I would love to see a clear seperation between symbols, landpatterns and simulation files into full gpl and into a more lgpl collections. This would make it clear how these collections could and should be used.
Thanks, Steve Meier Bernd Jendrissek wrote: > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 03:46:22PM -0400, DJ Delorie wrote: > >> If, however, you embed a GPL'd symbol into a non-GPL'd schematic (or > >> visa-versa), you can no longer distribute that schematic under any > >> terms. But you can still use it locally." > > The question becomes more interesting with footprints. Legally, are > > you distributing a work derived from the footprints when you ship a > > populated board? It could be argued either way, but the font > > copyright law is probably our best precedent. > > Or maybe you are doing exactly what you do when you compile your C > program with GCC on a target that doesn't have muldi3 etc. so you end up > with bits of libgcc in your binary. Yes, including the code in libgcc > to produce an executable program is exactly the purpose of libgcc, but > you still needs that exception to be able to include those bits into a > proprietary program (and then to distribute it). > > My personal opinion is that if people want to use gEDA / PCB to design > boards and they are not willing to pass the GPL freedoms onto their > boards' users, then they can damn well do the work of creating their own > parts library! I realize this is a somewhat Stallmanian view and gEDA / > PCB may well care more about gaining a user base than about locking in > freedom. > > Also, if a schematic / layout doesn't work without the symbol library, > then the fact that it *references* symbols instead of *embedding* them > might not really matter in determining if the schematic / layout is a > derived work. This is the whole reason the LGPL even exists - to allow > you to *reference* (link to) interfaces in a library without getting > "infected". > _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev _______________________________________________ geda-dev mailing list [email protected] http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-dev
