Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.
< Not copied to the overloaded linux-kernel list > On Wed, 13 Apr 2005, Raul Miller wrote: On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 11:28:59PM -0700, Sean Kellogg wrote: Failure to have a click-through license means that there is no acceptance, which is a fundamental part of contract law. No acceptance, no contract, no exceptions. False. For example, you can indicate acceptance of the GPL by exercising the rights it grants. Furthermore, the converse is also false: it's quite possible to install software on your machine without clicking on the click-through license. For example, someone else might install it for you. [You expect my dad to figure out how to install anything?] -- Raul Fundamental to contract law is an agreement. If there is no agreement, there is no contract. For a contract to even exist, the parties involved must have, at least at some time, agreed upon the exact specified contract, not something similar, but the exact specifications. To keep these specifications precisely known by all parties, they usually establish a written contract. Written contracts are easier to defend than others, but verbal, or even implied contracts are no less valid. For instance, if you purchase a screw-driver, there is an implied contract called "fitness of use". It should be useful for manipulating screws. If it isn't, then the seller has the obligation to return the buyer's money if the buyer returns the screw driver. Just because the screw-driver was designed for manipulating screws, does not bind the purchaser to that use. The purchaser can use the screw-driver as a pry-bar or a chisel. However, any warranty is not implied for such use. A computer program that forces, or by use of coercion, requires a purchaser to "agree" to some terms of use cannot establish a valid contract. If you can't complete the installation of the program unless you abide by some terms shown in some menu, then some courts have held that any implied contract is invalid because one can't be forced to agree and have that agreement represent a contract. That's why so-called "employment contracts" where a prospective employee is forced to sign some paper or he doesn't get the job, are considered unenforceable (read invalid). It's very simple. The usual implied contract of a purchased product is that the user pays money and, in return, the user gets to use the product. Many software companies have attempted to corrupt this by requiring the user to agree to additional terms after the user has left the store with the knowledge that he is now free to use the product for which he paid. Such an agreement is coerced and, therefore, cannot represent a valid contract. Further, one is never required to use the software for its intended purpose just like you don't really need to use a screw-driver on screws. Lawyers make money by writing obfuscating contracts and then attempting to enforce or defend against them. Again, just because there is some stuff in a software screen that you have to "click- through", doesn't mean that it has any validity at all. When studying Law, one must realize that there are no absolutes, unlike mathematics. One court may hold one view of a law and another may hold a completely different view. Even when actions are moved out of the local courts and into federal courts, the results of these actions are not always predictable. Judges often want to make "new law", often rejecting case law. For a good book on US Computer Software Law I suggest "THE LAW OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY" Raymond T. Nimmer. ISBN 088712-355-4. There is a beginning section on Copyright Law. For instance, on page 1-16 ; "...the distinction between idea and expression in flowcharts and source code is uncertain. As a practical matter, the distinction indicates that copyright is not a viable protection for the author of a program in these forms." Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.11 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by Dictator Bush. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.
On Thu, 7 Apr 2005, Humberto Massa wrote: David Schmitt wrote: On Thursday 07 April 2005 09:25, Jes Sorensen wrote: [snip] I got it from Alteon under a written agreement stating I could distribute the image under the GPL. Since the firmware is simply data to Linux, hence keeping it under the GPL should be just fine. Then I would like to exercise my right under the GPL to aquire the source code for the firmware (and the required compilers, starting with genfw.c which is mentioned in acenic_firmware.h) since - as far as I know - firmware is coded today in VHDL, C or some assembler and the days of hexcoding are long gone. First, there is *NOT* any requirement in the GPL at all that requires making compilers available. Otherwise it would not be possible, for instance, have a Visual Basic GPL'd application. And yes, it is possible. Second, up until the present day I have personal experience with hardware producers that do not have enough money to buy expensive toolchains and used a lot of hand-work to code hardware parameters. So, at least for them, hand-hexcoding-days are still going. HTH, Massa Well it doesn't make any difference. If GPL has degenerated to where one can't upload microcode to a device as part of its initialization, without having the "source" that generated that microcode, we are in a lot of hurt. Intel isn't going to give their designs away. Last time I checked, GPL was about SOFTware, not FIRMware, and not MICROcode. If somebody has decided to rename FIRMware to SOFTware, then they need to complete the task and call it DORKware, named after themselves. This whole thread and gotten truly bizarre. Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.11 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by Dictator Bush. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.
On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le mardi 05 avril 2005 ÿÿ 11:50 -0400, Richard B. Johnson a ÿÿcrit : You are mixing apples and oranges. The fact that the GFDL sucks has nothing to do with the firmware issue. With the current situation of firmwares in the kernel, it is illegal to redistribute binary images of the kernel. Full stop. End of story. Bye bye. Redhat and SuSE may still be willing to distribute such binary images, but it isn't our problem. Wrong! It is perfectly legal in the United States, and I'm pretty sure in your country, to distribute or redistribute copyrighted works. Otherwise there wouldn't be any bookstores or newspaper stands. It is not legal to distribute the mix of a GPL software (the Linux kernel) and a proprietary file (the firmware). I wasn't aware of the "mere aggregation" interpretation, and I'm probably a bit late to say I disagree with it - mainly because you'd have a hard time convincing a court this is the case. There is nothing about firmware that is any different than any other component of a product. If the product was legally obtained and it requires firmware to run, then there are no special considerations about how one inserts the firmware into the product. Indeed, but that's not what I'm talking about. If you are a GPL-religious-zealot who believes that you are supposed to get the technical design (i.e. the software schematics) of the hardware device for free so you can copy it, then you are going to have to learn something about intellectual property. Maybe you should try to understand what people are saying before teaching them anything. The firmware, in most cases, are the bits generated by a design program that creates the function of the device. It's what the manufacturer paid 5-10 engineers over a period of a year or so to produce. The rest of the design is just some chips you can get off-the-shelf. Even if the manufacturer said; "Here you are You can have the design". You don't have the "compilers" and other stuff necessary to turn this design into the firmware unless you planned to steal the design. So, you either accept the firmware component, thanking the manufacturer for it, or you go cry foul someplace else. This whole firmware thing is a non-issue, blown way out of proportion by people who don't have a clue. You are completely missing the point. I don't care whether the firmwares should be free, or whether they could be free. The fact is they are not free, and Debian doesn't distribute non-free software in the "main" archive. The fact is also that mixing them with a GPLed software gives an result you can't redistribute - although it seems many people disagree with that assertion now. As previously explained, if I buy a screen-card I get a driver that will allow it to run under Windows. If I extract the stuff from that driver that allows me to run it under Linux, that constitutes fair use. Otherwise there are criminal issues like restraint-of-trade and similar problems for the manufacturer. That firmware is free for use on/in the device you purchased. Finally, you shouldn't forget that, technically speaking, using hotplug for uploading the firmware is much more flexible and elegant than including it in the kernel. Upgrading the firmware and the module should be two independent operations. People who are advocating the current situation are refusing technical improvements just because they are brought by people they find convenient to call "zealots". Throwing in a bit of truth to a pile of bullshit still leaves the bullshit. It isn't relevant to the issue whether or not upgrading firmware as a separate function from loading a module is "good" or "bad". -- .''`. Josselin Mouette/\./\ : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] `. `'[EMAIL PROTECTED] `- Debian GNU/Linux -- The power of freedom Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.11 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by Dictator Bush. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction.
Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice.
On Tue, 5 Apr 2005, Humberto Massa wrote: Josselin Mouette wrote: You are mixing apples and oranges. The fact that the GFDL sucks has nothing to do with the firmware issue. With the current situation of firmwares in the kernel, it is illegal to redistribute binary images of the kernel. Full stop. End of story. Bye bye. Redhat and SuSE may still be willing to distribute such binary images, but it isn't our problem. Wrong! It is perfectly legal in the United States, and I'm pretty sure in your country, to distribute or redistribute copyrighted works. Otherwise there wouldn't be any bookstores or newspaper stands. There is nothing about firmware that is any different than any other component of a product. If the product was legally obtained and it requires firmware to run, then there are no special considerations about how one inserts the firmware into the product. If you are a GPL-religious-zealot who believes that you are supposed to get the technical design (i.e. the software schematics) of the hardware device for free so you can copy it, then you are going to have to learn something about intellectual property. The firmware, in most cases, are the bits generated by a design program that creates the function of the device. It's what the manufacturer paid 5-10 engineers over a period of a year or so to produce. The rest of the design is just some chips you can get off-the-shelf. Even if the manufacturer said; "Here you are You can have the design". You don't have the "compilers" and other stuff necessary to turn this design into the firmware unless you planned to steal the design. So, you either accept the firmware component, thanking the manufacturer for it, or you go cry foul someplace else. This whole firmware thing is a non-issue, blown way out of proportion by people who don't have a clue. Sometimes a manufacturer doesn't have a separate bag-of-bits to supply competing operating systems. Instead, only one "driver" for one OS was produced by the manufacturer. Extracting those bits, from offset-N to offset-M in that driver likely constitutes fair use as long as the product wasn't stolen and the driver was distributed with the product, or was publicly available. Yes, GFDL has nothing to do with the main issue. No, it is not necessarily illegal to redistribute binary images of the kernel as they are today (see below). The first problem is that they (the complete w/firmware kernel binary images) are not DFSG-free, anyway. The second problem is that some firmware blobs don't have explicitly stated in the kernel tree which exactly are their licensing terms for redistribution -- those are, in principle, undistributable. Putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes them distributable. Some distributions will want to include them, some others not. But the important point is that it makes that redistribution legal. If putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes *them* distributable, then the binary kernel image is already distributable -- just not DFSG-free. The important fact WRT Debian, IMHO, is that putting the firmwares outside the kernel makes the kernel binary image DFSG-free. HTH, Massa Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.11 on an i686 machine (5537.79 BogoMips). Notice : All mail here is now cached for review by Dictator Bush. 98.36% of all statistics are fiction. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
