From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261793AbUFQTEl (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:04:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261832AbUFQTEl (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:04:41 -0400 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:7690 "EHLO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261793AbUFQTEj (ORCPT ); Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:04:39 -0400 Message-ID: <40D1EF5F.8080006@techsource.com> Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 15:22:07 -0400 From: Timothy Miller MIME-Version: 1.0 To: davids@webmaster.com CC: oliver@neukum.org, erikharrison@gmail.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: more files with licenses that aren't GPL-compatible References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org David Schwartz wrote: >> >>Now, this may open them up to reverse engineering, but so what. > > > This would mean that they would have to permit people to modify the > firmware, reverse engineer the firmware, and use the firmware with other > products. Them's the breaks. That's the risk you take any time you open up any IP as open source. This is why nVidia and ATI (lately) do not want to publish register references for their chips. This exposes things which competitors might benefit from in some way (whether in engineering or marketing). How do you do open source AND protect your IP investment at the same time? That's one of the tough issues with the GPL.