Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Tue, Oct 12, 2004 at 01:30:04PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote: Perhaps I should construct a package for non-free which instructs users to download Broadcom's driver; then unpacks it, and converts and installs the firmware files appropriately? (I *am* sure that Broadcom permits distribution from their own website directly to end-users, since they pretty much advertise that.) That I would feel safe doing. Yeah, that'd be good... Is a lot of conversion required for the firmware in the Windows driver archive? -- --- Paul TBBle Hampson, MCSE 7th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) [EMAIL PROTECTED] No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder? -- Capt. Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. --- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: TG3 firmware report...
* Thomas Bushnell: John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well understood and widely known. I don't believe that they would stand any chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. You cannot infer person A's intent in doing something merely by assuming that it must be the same as persons B, C, and D. Well, of course you can. A lot of contracts are made this way (for example, if you buy something in a shop). Is U.S. law really *that* different?
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Florian Weimer writes: Is U.S. law really *that* different? No. It is commonplace to introduce evidence about established industry practice in lawsuits. -- John Hasler
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: You cannot infer person A's intent in doing something merely by assuming that it must be the same as persons B, C, and D. Well, of course you can. A lot of contracts are made this way (for example, if you buy something in a shop). Actually, no. First, buying something in a shop doesn't necessarily involve any contract at all; it's a sale, which can proceed other than by contract. Second, the Uniform Commercial Code explicitly says things about following customary practices, and does say that commercial contracts are presumed to be following normal customary practices, so that such imputation of intent works there. But no, the UCC does not apply to copyright licensing. And finally, it might be evidence for A's intent that they were probably wanting what B, C, and D, wanted. I said that you can't get there *merely* from that assumption, but there must be some additional something to help it along. Otherwise, the inference doesn't go. Moreover, companies are allowed to have deceptive copyright statements; in fact, they do it all the time. Nearly every book or CD you get has a deceptive copyright statement on it. Thomas
Re: TG3 firmware report...
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: No. It is commonplace to introduce evidence about established industry practice in lawsuits. Right, but this is not imputation of intent, and it's generally done under the UCC which worked a sea change in US commercial contracts law for this purpose, but does not apply to non-contractual things like copyright licenses.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Marco d'Itri wrote: On Oct 10, Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. I don't know why upstream is distributing it; I believe they are simply being sloppy about licensing. You know well that upstream is not being sloppy, but disagrees with your interpretation of licensing. On the contrary. The upstream maintainer stated that nobody from Broadcom complained, and apparently felt that that was sufficient, and that it was unimportant to get a valid explicit license. Or indeed to include Broadcom's copyright statement at all, until I complained about its absence. That, to me, seems sloppy. Copyright infrignment is strict liability, IIRC. This is not safe to mess around with. -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
John Hasler wrote: Nathanael Nerode writes: To me, this means that Broadcom didn't know what the hell it was doing. I cannot divine Broadcom's actual intentions from that, and Broadcom can easily and convincingly claim that it intended something different from what you assume. The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well understood and widely known. The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL but without source code, however, is not well understood or widely known. If indeed anyone understands it. I don't believe that they would stand any chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. Have you got a legal opinion to back that up? :-P The fact that they have already permitted redistribution would count heavily against them. Well, if you feel safe distributing the tg3 microcode files in non-free, you may. I don't, which is why I have not submitted such a package to Debian. I will be happy to tell you how to take the files from Broadcom's driver and convert them to the form which is loaded by the driver currently in Debian, and to give you my tools for doing so. (Or anyone else who is interested in this.) Perhaps I should construct a package for non-free which instructs users to download Broadcom's driver; then unpacks it, and converts and installs the firmware files appropriately? (I *am* sure that Broadcom permits distribution from their own website directly to end-users, since they pretty much advertise that.) That I would feel safe doing. -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote: John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas writes: In cases like this one, what has happened is that the copyright holder has simply failed to make legal distribution possible, by saying you must distribute complete source and then failing to provide it. He has provided what he claims is source. If there was an explicit statement saying Broadcom claims that this is source code for the purposes of the GPL, that would be the case. I have not been able to get such a statement from Broadcom, either. If someone has better lines of communication with Broadcom, they can clear this up really easily: making the statement above; releasing the source code; licensing under 2-clause BSD or MIT/X11; or stating We intend to allow anyone to redistribute these hex files in any form: *any one* of these options would make the firmware safe to distribute in non-free. However, since I have not yet been able to talk to anyone at Broadcom who appears to know anything about this, I do not feel safe making any assumptions about their intent. If he sues me for redistributing all of what I got from him after he told me it included source he will be laughed out of court. In this case, one would be well advised to obtain an explicit waiver on the point, rather than to rely on such. Which is exactly what I hoped to get. Unfortunately, I have had a hard time getting feedback from Broadcom. If you fancy your luck, please try! -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
* Nathanael Nerode: Unless of course the firmware itself is GPL'd, and therefore no one can legally give it out without offering the source as well. It is GPLed. This is why it hasn't been put in non-free. :-P Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. Of course it is safe to distribute. What do you fear? That Broadcom might sue you for distributing something that they have written and released under the GPL, and actually have a case? They might as well sue Debian because the toolchain supports the SB-1 architecture. Of course, Debian is free to refrain from distribution for other reasons, but citing legal problems to cover up political decisions is dishonest.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Nathanael Nerode: Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. Of course it is safe to distribute. What do you fear? That Broadcom might sue you for distributing something that they have written and released under the GPL, and actually have a case? They might as well sue Debian because the toolchain supports the SB-1 architecture. Indeed. It's obviously the intention of the licensor to provide code that can be distributed. There are potentially issues with derived works containing a combination of the firmware and other GPLed code, but that's why we'd consider non-free rather than anywhere else. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 11:40:30AM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote: Of course it is safe to distribute. What do you fear? That Broadcom might sue you for distributing something that they have written and released under the GPL, and actually have a case? They might as well sue Debian because the toolchain supports the SB-1 architecture. they may have released it under the GPL, but there's a strong case for arguing that they're in violation of their own licensing terms for not providing the source code to the firmware blobs. if they were in fact in violation of said terms, debian could not legally distribute the code. or so the argument goes. sean -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Mon, 2004-10-11 at 09:06 -0400, sean finney wrote: On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 11:40:30AM +0200, Florian Weimer wrote: Of course it is safe to distribute. What do you fear? That Broadcom might sue you for distributing something that they have written and released under the GPL, and actually have a case? They might as well sue Debian because the toolchain supports the SB-1 architecture. they may have released it under the GPL, but there's a strong case for arguing that they're in violation of their own licensing terms for not providing the source code to the firmware blobs. if they were in fact in violation of said terms, debian could not legally distribute the code. or so the argument goes. You can't violate your own licensing terms. A licence is what an author gives to somebody to adjust the rights they have on a work. The licensee is bound by the licence, not the author. (Note that this arguably doesn't apply where the author has taken back patches under their own licence because they are in fact the licensee not the author.) Scott -- Have you ever, ever felt like this? Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist? signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: TG3 firmware report...
sean writes: they may have released it under the GPL, but there's a strong case for arguing that they're in violation of their own licensing terms for not providing the source code to the firmware blobs. if they were in fact in violation of said terms, debian could not legally distribute the code. What do you mean by legally? Copyright infringement is a tort, and there is no way they could win an infringement lawsuit against a distributor for failing to redistribute the source for the blobs when they did not supply it themselves and yet asserted that the work was under the GPL. The real risk (if any) is of being sued by a kernel author. -- John Hasler
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Scripsit sean finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] they may have released it under the GPL, but there's a strong case for arguing that they're in violation of their own licensing terms for not providing the source code to the firmware blobs. The copyright holder cannot logically be in violation of his own licensing terms. He does not need a license at all to distribute his own work, thus there is nothing for *him* to violate. -- Henning MakholmJeg køber intet af Sulla, og selv om uordenen griber planmæssigt om sig, så er vi endnu ikke nået dertil hvor ordentlige mennesker kan tillade sig at stjæle slaver fra hinanden. Så er det ligegyldigt, hvor stærke, politiske modstandere vi er.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Henning Makholm [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Scripsit sean finney [EMAIL PROTECTED] they may have released it under the GPL, but there's a strong case for arguing that they're in violation of their own licensing terms for not providing the source code to the firmware blobs. The copyright holder cannot logically be in violation of his own licensing terms. He does not need a license at all to distribute his own work, thus there is nothing for *him* to violate. Right. In cases like this one, what has happened is that the copyright holder has simply failed to make legal distribution possible, by saying you must distribute complete source and then failing to provide it. So the only way to comply with the license in such a case is simply to do no distribution at all. Thomas
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Matthew Garrett wrote: Florian Weimer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Nathanael Nerode: Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. Of course it is safe to distribute. What do you fear? That Broadcom might sue you for distributing something that they have written and released under the GPL, and actually have a case? Yes. They would have an excellent case. They didn't grant explicit permission to distribute without source. I don't have source, so I'd better not distribute. If I were defending myself, I'd have to claim that they'd granted implicit permission, and I don't think I'd have better than a 50-50 chance of winning; see below. They might as well sue Debian because the toolchain supports the SB-1 architecture. Indeed. It's obviously the intention of the licensor to provide code that can be distributed. Maybe it's obvious to you. It's certainly not obvious to me. In actual fact, Broadcom released the firmware code under a license which does not grant permission to redistribute. (It requires source but the source is not provided; see Thomas Bushnell's message which summarizes the situation at http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/10/msg00705.html .) To me, this means that Broadcom didn't know what the hell it was doing. I cannot divine Broadcom's actual intentions from that, and Broadcom can easily and convincingly claim that it intended something different from what you assume. If Broadcom (or some irresponsible successor company; think SCO) decided to sue for copyright infringement, they could claim that they had never intended to allow people in general to redistribute the firmware without source -- that it was just for them to distribute, and perhaps for kernel.org as well -- that any further distribution was inadvertent -- and they would actually have a pretty good case, as far as I can tell. (Of course, if you get an actual legal opinion from a copyright lawyer saying differently, I will of course concede, since IANAL.) Now, if Broadcom could be contacted, and they said, Oh, we meant to allow anyone to redistribute the hex/binary blobs without further source code, that would be different. Then it would be safe to distribute with a copy of that statement. I have not been able to get such a clarification from Broadcom, and I have tried. If you can get such a clarification, more power to you. -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Thomas writes: In cases like this one, what has happened is that the copyright holder has simply failed to make legal distribution possible, by saying you must distribute complete source and then failing to provide it. He has provided what he claims is source. If he sues me for redistributing all of what I got from him after he told me it included source he will be laughed out of court. So the only way to comply with the license in such a case is simply to do no distribution at all. You just have to refrain from distributing derivatives that are combinations of such bungled works and ones that are properly GPL'd (or get permission of the authors of the properly GPL'd works). -- John Hasler
Re: TG3 firmware report...
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What do you mean by legally? Copyright infringement is a tort, and there is no way they could win an infringement lawsuit against a distributor for failing to redistribute the source for the blobs when they did not supply it themselves and yet asserted that the work was under the GPL. The real risk (if any) is of being sued by a kernel author. That's only a risk if we ship it linked with the kernel. Shipping a single blob of hex in non-free shouldn't be a problem in that respect. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Nathanael Nerode writes: To me, this means that Broadcom didn't know what the hell it was doing. I cannot divine Broadcom's actual intentions from that, and Broadcom can easily and convincingly claim that it intended something different from what you assume. The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well understood and widely known. I don't believe that they would stand any chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. The fact that they have already permitted redistribution would count heavily against them. -- John Hasler
Re: TG3 firmware report...
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Thomas writes: In cases like this one, what has happened is that the copyright holder has simply failed to make legal distribution possible, by saying you must distribute complete source and then failing to provide it. He has provided what he claims is source. If he sues me for redistributing all of what I got from him after he told me it included source he will be laughed out of court. In this case, one would be well advised to obtain an explicit waiver on the point, rather than to rely on such. Regardless, the question is irrelevant to Debian, because we require source.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
John Hasler [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well understood and widely known. I don't believe that they would stand any chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. You cannot infer person A's intent in doing something merely by assuming that it must be the same as persons B, C, and D.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 10:47:26AM -0500, John Hasler wrote: What do you mean by legally? Copyright infringement is a tort, and there is no way they could win an infringement lawsuit against a distributor for failing to redistribute the source for the blobs when they did not supply it themselves and yet asserted that the work was under the GPL. the terms of the gpl quite explicitly state that software must be distributed with its source code, where source code is defined as the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it (and i somehow doubt that a binary blob is their preferred form, but if they could successfully argue this point this is all m00t). unless we have the author's permission to use an alternate license, wherein the bulk of the code went into contrib and the binary blob went into non-free, or unless the author opened up the firmware, we're unable to legally redistribute it, period. On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 06:53:05PM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote: That's only a risk if we ship it linked with the kernel. Shipping a single blob of hex in non-free shouldn't be a problem in that respect. i do not believe that a piece of gpl'd code could legally link against this blob. if this were to be put under some system for loading firmware in userland, i think it'd be up for debate; but the lack of a usable Free alternative would make me think the driver would still need to go in contrib at the least. On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 04:53:10PM +0100, Scott James Remnant wrote: You can't violate your own licensing terms. A licence is what an author gives to somebody to adjust the rights they have on a work. The licensee is bound by the licence, not the author. you're arguing my point. debian is a licensee, and is not able to meet with the terms of the license. On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 05:26:38PM +0100, Henning Makholm wrote: The copyright holder cannot logically be in violation of his own licensing terms. He does not need a license at all to distribute his own work, thus there is nothing for *him* to violate. this is true, but there is something for *us*... On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 01:19:54PM -0500, John Hasler wrote: The intent implied by publically releasing a work under the GPL is well understood and widely known. I don't believe that they would stand any chance of getting an injunction, let alone damages. have you missed everything going on with SCO? granted, their case was a load of crap from the beginning, but it goes to show that this is not something to be taken lightly. and anyway, i don't think you'll get very far trying to argue implied intent against the holder of a copyright in a courtroom... sean -- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Thomas Bushnell BSG [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In this case, one would be well advised to obtain an explicit waiver on the point, rather than to rely on such. Regardless, the question is irrelevant to Debian, because we require source. Debian does not require source for non-free. The distribution that we ship under the name Debian requires source, but that's not the only software we provide. -- Matthew Garrett | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: TG3 firmware report...
Hi, Daniel Freedman wrote: Anyway, just thought I'd see what people think of this, and how the Debian community wants to proceed. Is there some way to enable compability with this without downloading the firmware and violating the DFSG? Since the tg3 driver doesn't work with my BCM5702 interface anyway (#240812), I'm using the bcm5700-source driver from non-free. I guess people running servers and using the advanced features of this driver are doing the same. Feel free to write a personal email to Broadcom asking for the source of their GPLed driver. bye, Roland
Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Sat, Oct 09, 2004 at 07:10:33PM -0400, Daniel Freedman wrote: Unfortunately, I believe that my server board contains one of the rare on-board Broadcom chipsets that is completely unable to function (best as I can tell), without downloading this firmware, or without at least disabling the download of it... In other words, it works perfectly with 2.4.26, but not at all with 2.6.8. It's recognized fine, get's IP address fine, has kernel modules loaded etc., but simply drops packets off the stack... Anyway, just thought I'd see what people think of this, and how the Debian community wants to proceed. Is there some way to enable compability with this without downloading the firmware and violating the DFSG? Surely you can grab the firmware yourself, dump it into the appropriate place in /lib/firmware (the boot message from the tg3 driver tells you) and then it'll work on next boot? This won't break the DFSG as far as I know, 'cause you're not distributing the firmware and Broadcom presumably are happy for you to download it yourself for use. Unless of course the firmware itself is GPL'd, and therefore no one can legally give it out without offering the source as well. I'm not sure this is the right list for this topic, anyway... -- --- Paul TBBle Hampson, MCSE 7th year CompSci/Asian Studies student, ANU The Boss, Bubblesworth Pty Ltd (ABN: 51 095 284 361) [EMAIL PROTECTED] No survivors? Then where do the stories come from I wonder? -- Capt. Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean This email is licensed to the recipient for non-commercial use, duplication and distribution. --- signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: TG3 firmware report...
hi * Roland Stigge [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-10-10 15:46]: Daniel Freedman wrote: Anyway, just thought I'd see what people think of this, and how the Debian community wants to proceed. Is there some way to enable compability with this without downloading the firmware and violating the DFSG? Since the tg3 driver doesn't work with my BCM5702 interface anyway (#240812), I'm using the bcm5700-source driver from non-free. I guess people running servers and using the advanced features of this driver are doing the same. Feel free to write a personal email to Broadcom asking for the source of their GPLed driver. the source is included in the kernel sources :) regards nico -- Nico Golde - [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.ngolde.de GPG: FF46 E565 5CC1 E2E5 3F69 C739 1D87 E549 7364 7CFF Is there life after /sbin/halt -p? signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: TG3 firmware report...
posted mailed Paul Hampson wrote: On Sat, Oct 09, 2004 at 07:10:33PM -0400, Daniel Freedman wrote: Unfortunately, I believe that my server board contains one of the rare on-board Broadcom chipsets that is completely unable to function (best as I can tell), without downloading this firmware, or without at least disabling the download of it... In other words, it works perfectly with 2.4.26, but not at all with 2.6.8. It's recognized fine, get's IP address fine, has kernel modules loaded etc., but simply drops packets off the stack... Anyway, just thought I'd see what people think of this, and how the Debian community wants to proceed. Is there some way to enable compability with this without downloading the firmware and violating the DFSG? Surely you can grab the firmware yourself, dump it into the appropriate place in /lib/firmware (the boot message from the tg3 driver tells you) and then it'll work on next boot? This won't break the DFSG as far as I know, 'cause you're not distributing the firmware and Broadcom presumably are happy for you to download it yourself for use. Unless of course the firmware itself is GPL'd, and therefore no one can legally give it out without offering the source as well. It is GPLed. This is why it hasn't been put in non-free. :-P Contact Broadcom and ask them to do one of the following things: (1) Release source for the firmware (2) Release the firmware under a license which allows distribution without source Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. I don't know why upstream is distributing it; I believe they are simply being sloppy about licensing. I'm not sure this is the right list for this topic, anyway... -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
posted mailed Nico Golde wrote: hi * Roland Stigge [EMAIL PROTECTED] [2004-10-10 15:46]: Daniel Freedman wrote: Anyway, just thought I'd see what people think of this, and how the Debian community wants to proceed. Is there some way to enable compability with this without downloading the firmware and violating the DFSG? Since the tg3 driver doesn't work with my BCM5702 interface anyway (#240812), I'm using the bcm5700-source driver from non-free. I guess people running servers and using the advanced features of this driver are doing the same. Feel free to write a personal email to Broadcom asking for the source of their GPLed driver. the source is included in the kernel sources :) regards nico Um, no, the firmware source isn't. There's just a hunk of hex. -- This space intentionally left blank.
Re: TG3 firmware report...
On Oct 10, Nathanael Nerode [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Until they do one of these two things, the firmware is not safe to distribute. I don't know why upstream is distributing it; I believe they are simply being sloppy about licensing. You know well that upstream is not being sloppy, but disagrees with your interpretation of licensing. -- ciao, | Marco | [8468 qu1ZFFjpdB01A] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
