On Mon, 2009-06-22 at 19:59 +0200, Dominic wrote: > Hi List, > > > > there has been some speculation about my original intents so I thought > I might chime in here. > > > > I'm all in favor of enforcing the GPL where it achieves anything for > the user. In case of FTD2XX I decided to go the pragmatic way instead > of the idealist's way. > > > > Why do we want to link against compatibly licensed libraries only? > Because we want to ensure the user's freedom to use our software and > his hardware on whatever platform he sees fit. Back then there was > libftdi, which allowed FTD2XX based interfaces to be used on Linux, > *BSD and so on. And we had FTD2XX which allowed the FTD2XX based > interface to be used on Windows, and which offered a significant > performance improvement on Linux (this has been solved? I remember > reading something about it on the list...). My point of view was that > we weren't restricting a user's freedom by allowing the use of FTD2XX. > Instead it made the OpenOCD accessible to a much greater audience. As > long as libftdi /could/ be made to do the same thing that FTD2XX does, > using information publicly available, I don't see an immediate need to > enforce seemingly arbitrary restrictions over our users. > > > > I wasn't aware of the possibility or need for license exceptions, and > I thought (IANAL... how I hate that acronym...) that if anyone, it > would take me to enforce the GPL terms. As I had no intend to enforce > the GPL over someone who linked against FTD2XX I figured everything > would be fine (I think I explicitly wrote that to Michael Fischer some > years ago). This may not have been the wisest of decisions but that's > how it is or rather was.
Thank you for providing clarification of your original intention; however, you have only confirmed what was already clear: there has never been a formal exception to the GPL. Any arrangements were made informally and without modifying the GPL license itself. Even if your exception was published in a public forum, you will have a difficult time defending that it applies -- since the license was never modified in the tree. Øyvind Harboe, David Brownell, and myself are against any exceptions, so there can be no exception added to the license for the contributions that we have made. Your clarification appears to have no legal bearing on license for the current trunk: OpenOCD is pure GPL, and it always has been since it was created. > Øyvind mentioned the idea of wrapping the JTAG API in TCP/IP. Aside > from performance implications I think this would require some > significant development efforts with little immediate benefits. Even > worse, it would encourage other JTAG interface vendors to implement > their JTAG interface layer as a binary only driver that talks to the > OpenOCD via TCP/IP layer, too. I am opposed to this as well, for the same reasons. This is why I did not suggest it until someone else suggested it. I want to see libusb and libfdti fixed, and I do not want to open the door to more binary drivers. If I were to implement the TCP/IP interface without pay, I would release it under the GPL to prevent this situation from ever occurring. At this point, I am tempted to implement it simply in order to close this back door to binary drivers. Cheers, Zach _______________________________________________ Openocd-development mailing list Openocd-development@lists.berlios.de https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/openocd-development
