Timothy Normand Miller wrote: > If everyone who works on the BIOS wants to use (L)GPL and let > Traversal dual-license it, that would be fine. The main reason to use > a license like X11 is so that drivers can be written that have to > include code that isn't GPL-compatible. For instance, a Windows > driver. The BIOS _may_ be self-contained enough that (L)GPL will be > okay. Most of them are proprietary anyhow, but what _I_ really want > is for people to be able to rip code as they see fit, especially if > they're doing it to support our hardware. >
This is actually a very interesting point. Technically the BIOS is a library since other compiled programs call it through a defined interface in order to accomplish stuff. However, if it was treated as a true library, no GPL program could use it without requiring that it's source be released as well. My interpretation, based mainly on the state of affairs now, is that we can license the BIOS however we like. So long as it is self contained like current VGA BIOS's are, I don't think it would be a problem. > I'm not sure how to license the microcontroller code. The code is > necessary to make the device work, so we need the ability to, for > instance, drop a binary blob into the Windows driver that it loads, > regardless of the license for the Windows driver. It also has to > allow the binary blob to be included in the BIOS without problems. > This is one of those situations where I'd like the source code to be > under GPL but our binary blobs are under X11, if that makes any sense. > Maybe LGPL will do it. > > This one will take some thought. Patrick M _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
