From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: william baroniunas Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:14:51 +0000 Subject: Re: a3load.hex Message-Id: <20051017131451.38662.qmail@web30705.mail.mud.yahoo.com> List-Id: References: <20051014134617.42227.qmail@web30703.mail.mud.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <20051014134617.42227.qmail@web30703.mail.mud.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org Thanks for you reply. I am not actually giving advice, but seeking it. My concern is that there are many distributions that include this module, and unless we get Cypress to rewrite their copyright, that leaves the door open for litigation. I didn't mean to imply that we should only use the GPL. There are quite a number of open source compatible licenses which developers need to be made aware of so that we can avoid potential future problems. I've contacted Cypress and their reply was that the firmware is not freely distributed, and should only be distributed with s/w written for one of their devices. I am going to try to work with them to have this license updated for the open source community, but that's a long shot. Just be aware that some distros will start removing these files if they do not contain real open source licenses. --- Adrian McMenamin wrote: > On Fri, 2005-10-14 at 06:46 -0700, william > baroniunas wrote: > > > > > How are folks in the Linux community handling this > > issue? Are there hotplug distributions that have > > extracted this file, as well as the ezusb > functions? > > Or has everyone simply ignored the copyright? To > keep > > open source as real open source, it should ONLY > > include files that apply to a GPL-like license. > > I think you'll find that one of the principal uses > of hotplug is to > allow the distribution of firmware with distros. > > For instance, I have some firmware for the device I > am working on which > is BSD licenced. In Linux 2.4 all this was whacked > into a header in the > kernel and distributed under the GPL. Although the > source was freely > available, GPL purists could have argued it was > tainting the kernel (in > fact there are not enough Dreamcast users to make an > issue of this). > > However, hotplug allows me to distribute the > firmware in userspace and > keep the kernel GPL-pure. > > In other cases the firmware won't even be available > on BSD-type terms. > In that case if we followed your advice (on licences > NOT copyright by > the way) we'd have nothing. > > As an aside: is the reply-to header not set on this > list deliberately? > > __________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - Make it your home page! http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel