On 12/20/06, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From a strategic viewpoint, anybody who buys open-design hardware parts for any reason helps build up volume and bring down piece parts costs, and that helps all of us. Anything that increases the popularity of an open-design part helps our general credibility -- so we want the world to know where the part is used.
You sum it up well. GPL (and other licenses we apply) affect distribution of the intellectual property. The chip itself, however, doesn't qualify as intellectual property. It is (and I'm probably using an incorrect term) "real" property. It is no longer intellectual, per se. When you buy one of the chips, you have all of same rights as anyone who purchases something physical. If I buy a copy of "The Firm" by John Grisham, I can do just about anything I want with it. I can read it, give it away to a friend, lend it, burn it, make it into a sandwich and eat it, scribble on it, remove pages, turn it in to origami or jewelery, or shoot it out of a cannon. If I like, under fair use, I can even make photocopies of pages (for personal use), and I can quote small sections of it in other works, with proper attribution. What I am not allowed to do is make copies of significant portions of it and distribute those copies. At that point, I'm no longer distributing the physical property but rather some aspect of the intellectual property it was made from. My primary concern, making this an open source project, is being able to sell to people hardware they can use with free software. If the military or some big company orders a million of them and makes us sign an NDA that prohibits us from telling anyone who bought them, and they use the chips in some completely closed-up way, I'll be a very happy person. That deal has no negative effect on your ability to use this product. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
