Matthew J. Fisher wrote:
Here's the thread in which RMS replied to my previous post.
On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 11:02 -0500, Richard M Stallman wrote:
Up to this point it looks like kfv volunteers have marked such files as
"No license, so assumed to be GPLv2". Now we may have to report them as
freedom bugs -- and re-check sections which were previously certified
free.
That's whaty I think.
I'll wait a reality check before starting to file bug reports.
I do not understand. What is the "reality check" that you're
waiting for, and who is doing it?
... and here is where we get to the reality check.
What does the gNewSense users list think? Do we have any clear basis on
which to argue that copyrighted, unlicensed files within the gNewSense
kernel are free?
For example, are files copyrighted by Linus Torvalds clearly free since
the kernel as a whole is released by him under GPLv2? What about other
contributors, like the copyright holders for arch/x86/ia32/sys-ia32.c:
* Copyright (C) 2000 VA Linux Co
* Copyright (C) 2000 Don Dugger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* Copyright (C) 1999 Arun Sharma <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* Copyright (C) 1997,1998 Jakub Jelinek ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
* Copyright (C) 1997 David S. Miller ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
* Copyright (C) 2000 Hewlett-Packard Co.
* Copyright (C) 2000 David Mosberger-Tang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
* Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002 Andi Kleen, SuSE Labs (x86-64 port)
So far we _considered_ unlicensed files to be GPLv2 under the
_assumption_ that contributors to Linux know about it's license and that
Linus would not accept code which he knows is incompatibly licensed and
of course the confirmation Marco already got from the FSF.
On the other hand, considering the blobs in the kernel, it could be that
those contributors don't really care about the license or that Linus
didn't bother to ask them to specify or (probably) both.
Strictly speaking, it's very likely that those files don't fall under a
free license without an explicit notice or reference to COPYING.
However, I think very few of those files (if any) are meant to have a
license that is incompatible with the GPLv2. If it really is an issue
I'm surprised it hasn't come up on the kernel mailing list or
debian-legal yet (at least, I didn't find anything).
If we do have to file bugs, and the rate at which I've found them in
arch/x86 applies to the entire kernel, then we're talking about
approximately 8,000 kernel freedom bug reports for copyrighted but
unlicensed files. I don't know if this concern also applies to
previously certified packages in main -- but it could.
So far we have concentrated on blobs and I suggest we keep it that way
unless this turns out to be a huge issue. Thanks to the use of Emacs PFV
mode it's probably not too hard to remove a lot of the allegedly
offending files, but I fear there won't be much of a usable kernel left
after that.
Anyway, I think this issue is important enough to add to the GPL FAQ [1]
once it is resolved.
[1] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
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