Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 26 Mar 2004 00:33:39 +0000 | From | Matthew Wilcox <> | Subject | Re: Binary-only firmware covered by the GPL? |
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On Thu, Mar 25, 2004 at 05:31:53PM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote: > > Well IANAL, but it seems not so cut-n-dried, at least. > > Firmware is a program that executes on another processor, so no linking > is taking place at all. It is analagous to shipping a binary-only > program in your initrd, IMO.
Linking isn't the issue. I went and read the original bug on this a while back. The issue is that it's a program that's distributed in binary form without source code. That's forbidden from being in main by the terms of the Debian Social Contract.
I realise there's a grey area between "magic data you write to a device" and "a program that is executed on a different processor". For example, palette data for a frame buffer. But nobody's arguing for that grey area here -- it's clearly a program without source code that Debian can't distribute.
I think this is a terribly unfortunate state of affairs and I'm not happy about how it's been handled or communicated. I'd really appreciate it if someone managed to think of a good solution to this.
-- "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -- Mark Twain - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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