On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 01:57:05PM +0100, Oliver Elphick wrote: > On Thu, 2004-06-17 at 13:31, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote: > > > Unfortunately for Mr. Richter, Linux does not seem to contain any > > > copyright notices attributable to him or Yggdrasil before 2000. As I > > > cited elsewhere, this is at least FOUR YEARS after firmware was > > > included in the kernel, so he cannot fairly claim infringement. He > > > should have known that binary firmware existed in the kernel before. > > > > Nonsense. He made his code available to others under the GPL. Those > > others (Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Red Hat, etc) made a work derived > > from his work and that of others and distributed it. They violated > > the license they had from him when they did so. > > Unless someone else put it into the kernel without asking him (was that > the case?), he gave it to them under the GPL with a request to include > it in the kernel as it then was. That creates an implied permission to > do so, since otherwise his request to have it put in the kernel would be > nonsensical. There is no such thing as "implied permission" in copyright. Anything which is not expressly granted is forbidden. That's fundamental. -- .''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield : :' : http://www.debian.org/ | `. `' | `- -><- |
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