On 12/30/2009 11:48 PM, Greg KH wrote:
Heh, no, it does not, unless your BIOS, and your keyboard firmware, and your mouse firmware are all under a "free" license. The only thing close to this type of machine is the OLPC, and even then, I don't think all the microcode for the box was ever released. So it's a pointless effort.
Actually, you describe the futility of the effort, not the pointlessness of the effort. The fact that an effort is difficult or even futile does not make it pointless. Some might disagree about it being impossible as well (there are open-source BIOS implementations, for example).
I'm sure the people who have such philosophies try to run free software anytime that it is possible. They might not be able to run free software on their microwave, but if one came out with an open-source firmware they'd probably try to buy it. I don't see this as being inconsistent, just practical. The fact that they can't buy an open-source toaster or mouse doesn't mean that they can't use an open-source kernel.
Hint, these firmware blobs do not run on your processor, so they have nothing to do with the license of your "system".
I'm not really sure where you're coming up with this argument. The purpose of a license is to ALLOW you to do something you otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do. Licenses don't actually take away rights, they grant them. Laws do take away rights. There is a law that says that if I write a program and give it to you, you can't copy it and give it to somebody else. However, if I give you a license to copy the file under some conditions, then you can copy it legally if you follow those conditions. Nowhere in copyright law is the word "processor" found or implied - the technology used to copy is also irrelevant except to the degree that it impacts fair use.
When you run software you aren't distributing it. The concept of a use-license is a bit blurry - some people think that you don't need a license to use software, and other people think you do. I don't believe that court rulings are as uniform on the topic of use as they are on the concept of copying. In any case, the GPL v2 does not in any way attempt to restrict or grant the rights to use software - only to distribute it. GPL v3 is a bit murkier in this regard, but irrelevant to a discussion on the kernel.
Again, no, the GPLv2 covers the license of all of the code you run in the kernel package.
The concern isn't about RUNNING the software - it is about DISTRIBUTING the software.
And again, you do not run those firmware images on your processor, so the point is moot.
Sure you do - you run them on your sound card processor, or your video capture card processor, or whatever. However, the concern isn't running the software, it is redistributing it.
And note, _I_ placed those images in the kernel image, after consulting lawyers about this issue, so it's not like I don't know what I am talking about here.
Did they say that the GPLv2 applied to the entire tarball containing the firmware? Or did they simply state that building/running kernels using the tarball was legal?
Nobody is saying that the presence of the proprietary bits violates the GPL (v1, v2, OR v3). You're not doing anything illegal.
However, the tarball is not licensed under the GPLv2. I can't modify that tarball at will, for example, and redistribute it. If I modify 10 bytes in the middle of one of those firmware blobs, reassemble the tarball, and post that on my website, I can be sued by the maker of that firmware blob. I haven't violated the GPL in doing any of that - the problem is that the firmware blob isn't licensed under the GPL.
The license to redistribute the gentoo-sources tarball is NOT GPLv2 - it is GPLv2 for 98% of it, and a mix of other licenses for the rest. I don't own a keyspan usb serial device, but that doesn't mean I can modify the usa28.fw file and put it in a kernel tarball on my website, as the license for that file SPECIFICALLY states that I'm not allowed to do this and it is copyrighted. Doing this doesn't violate the GPL, but the GPL doesn't apply to this file.
The point of this thread is that the gentoo-sources package is mislabeled as GPLv2 when the entire package is not licensed under GPL v2. Nobody is saying that it is illegal to distribute gentoo-sources, only that it cannot be entirely distributed solely under GPLv2.
