I don't think there was any doubt, really. The radeon driver is undisputedly licensed under a Free Software license and doesn't contain human readable source code, so removed from gNewSense.
That said, despite the license, I've contacted Ericsson's USA headquarters for clarification: Will Ericsson honor the GPL by releasing corresponding source or restrict users by not releasing the source. I doubt it will get a responce but it's been sent. On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 6:44 PM, crap0101 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi! > about the bug 135 http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00135 , i wrote the > FSF. Well, they answer me (look down for the mail) and that package > seems not free. > What do you think? we can remove it? if yes, how? > > thank, > marco > > the FSF answer: > > ######################################################################## > Hi Marco, > > "These microcode data are placed under the terms of the > GNU General Public License." > > Ok, but the real question is, do they release an actual > human-modifiable source file or is basically just numbers? (A > "binary blob".) I expect the latter. In which case it should > not be in gnewsense regardless of its license. > > "We would prefer you not to distribute modified versions > of it and not to ask for assembly or other microcode > source." > > Well, that is hardly friendly but since all it says here is > "prefer" I suppose this paragraph is not a killer. > > "Copyright (c) 1995-2000 FORE Systems, Inc., as an > unpublished work. This notice does not imply > unrestricted or public access to these materials which > are a trade secret of FORE Systems, Inc. or its > subsidiaries or affiliates (together referred to as > "FORE"), and which may not be reproduced, used, sold or > transferred to any third party without FORE's prior > written consent. All rights reserved." > > However, this greatly restrictive notice contradicts the first > statement that it's under the GPL. In such a case, I can't see > how anything definitive can be said about the license -- all we > can say is that it might be free, or it might not be free. In > such a case, it hardly seems like it is a candidate for any free > software distribution. > > The paragraph about government rights doesn't help anything > either. > > > ############################################################ > > > > _______________________________________________ > gNewSense-users mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users > _______________________________________________ gNewSense-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-users
