Re: [Open-graphics] PCI GPL vs. LGPL, fund raising, etc.

[André Pouliot]

Timothy Miller wrote: On 3/4/06, Nicolas Boulay <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Le samedi 4 Mars 2006 15:36, J.O. Aho a écrit : Far from any expert in the filed, but I think making a driver would be the same as linking a program against a gpl library, the license would taint the code, which would prevent the closed source driver. There would be a need of a LGPL to allow closed source drivers. No it's not. The card is hardware. The GPL is a licence which is based on copyright. Hardware are not manage by copyright law. Precedent has been set for copyright law applying to chips. I don't remember the details, but: Company A produced a chip. Company B used a microscope and figured out how to copy it. Company A used a microscope to look at company B's chip and discovered that it was a copy. Company A sued company B in court and won. IANAL There's a law in some 20 country about protecting IC topographies. Canada and the US are 2 of those that have that law. The law is similar to copyright. If your are part of one of the countries who signed a similar law your protected in the other country who have signed it. You only need to register the topography  at the  right place in your country. In Canada it's the CIPO  with a description of what the circuits do, title, location, date and some other information. Ther's no validation check done unless you find someone infringing on your right. The law originate because of the copying of IC going during the '80. GPL/LGPL is often used for opencores (even by the European Space Agency) but it's hard to find an IP lawyer that's said how you could defined "a derivative form of work" inside hardware design. Synthesis from RTL to hardware is, by its nature, a mechanical translation process. It seems to me that this is an obvious case of "derivative work." If we don't have the necessary protections here to prevent unethical copying of our design, we're in trouble. Again IANAL but i think the hardware is not protected by the GPL, the RTL can be protected by it. But not the physical circuit.  But the mask and the physical implementation are protected by the Integrated circuits topographies act. http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/ict/ict_gd_ict-e.html (explication of the law in Canada)

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