From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Marco Stornelli Subject: Re: Fwd: Some embedded topics Date: Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:32:28 +0200 Message-ID: <4845019C.1050305@coritel.it> References: <483C83DE.3040604@cisco.com> <8bd0f97a0805271527i622a31b8t68ba24c80a2e034a@mail.gmail.com> <20080527223142.GU26837@email.mot.com> <8bd0f97a0805271535w267be51fq669def9aa424e4e7@mail.gmail.com> <840404080805280740q4486f377x49c106e20d9f5dc2@mail.gmail.com> <840404080805280744t351da73fk885fa7b29c05659c@mail.gmail.com> <483D7355.5050803@coritel.it> <48407DE5.3000208@am.sony.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <48407DE5.3000208@am.sony.com> Sender: linux-embedded-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Tim Bird , rob@landley.net Cc: linux-embedded@vger.kernel.org Tim Bird ha scritto: > Marco Stornelli wrote: >> There's a MontaVista patent on PRAMFS and I think that most of times >> when a company hears this thing it skips quickly this solution. > > Hmmm. I don't recall anything about a patent on PRAMFS. > > There are lots of issues here, but I think it's OK to use. > At a minimum, MontaVista's PRAMFS was submitted to the CE Linux Forum > in an older kernel (2.4.20-based). MontaVista was well-aware > of this submission (although it did not come directly from them). > MV was under an IP agreement with CELF which required them to > disclose such patents to the forum, and none was received. > > In any event (and without wanting to start a large off-topic legal > thread here), some lawyers would interpret the knowing publication > of an implementation embodying a patent under the GPL to be an > implicit license of use for the patent. > > YMMV. IANAL. Seek your own counsel on this. > >> Sometimes ago I sent a porting to 2.6.24, but I didn't receive any >> response. > > I'd love to see this. Did this go to LKML? If so, about when? > (Alternatively, could you make it available somewhere?) > > Thanks, > -- Tim > > ============================= > Tim Bird > Architecture Group Chair, CE Linux Forum > Senior Staff Engineer, Sony Corporation of America > ============================= > > From MontaVista site: "...File system designed by MontaVista Software for embedded systems - MontaVista has a patent pending on this code, but is licensing the patent freely for use in GPL software." I agree with you Tom and Rob but I meant that especially for a little company only reading "patent pending" can be dread, and you know that legal arguments can be long and expensive. About my patch, I sent an email to Steve Longerbeam on March because I read his name on the pramfs sourceforge project page. Now I haven't the patch anymore, however the latest patch is for 2.6.10 and the porting to 2.6.24 was easy because there weren't a lot of differences. Regards. -- Marco Stornelli Embedded Software Engineer CoRiTeL - Consorzio di Ricerca sulle Telecomunicazioni http://www.coritel.it marco.stornelli@coritel.it +39 06 72582838