Distribution agreement for ATI FireGL drivers
[I am not subscribed to debian-legal; please Cc any followups to me.]
Hi,
I've been trying to get ATIs FireGL drivers into non-free for a while (see
the ITP at bug #218369), but there doesn't seem to be a proper license for
it. I talked to ATI (who in general have been very helpful about this and
other Linux issues) about this, and their legal department sent the following
distribution agreement and requested that I sign it (I have of course not
done so yet):
http://www.sesse.net/download/ati-debian.doc
For convenience, I've opened it in OpenOffice.org and converted it into a
PDF, available at
http://www.sesse.net/download/ati-debian.pdf
As I see it, the license looks quite OK, but there are several show-stoppers:
- "Debian Project" doesn't exist as a legal entity at all; and even if it
did, I definitely did not have the power to make an agreement on behalf of
Debian. I also see a reference to "HOMELINC A/S", which I have never
heard of at all, and which I definitely do not have the power to bind.
- Point 1.1.1 is a bit unclear, talking about "distributing the drivers with
Debian GNU/Linux" (but non-free is not a part of Debian).
- 2.1 gives permission to distribute the object code only. For the package to
be of any use, parts of the sources of the kernel module (as they are
distributed in the original RPM file) must also be able to be distributed.
(I take it that this is only a minor detail that was forgotten.)
- Section 2.2.5 also seems a bit unclear. We are of course completely unable
to inforce the EULA upon each and every person who downloads the packaged
drivers, as they will be downloadable for free.
- Section 2.2.6 forbids modification of the software -- to some extent, the
package (like path names and such) would have to be modified to fit well
into Debian.
- Last, Appendix A seems to mention the XFree 4.3 drivers only. (For the time
being, Debian ships with XFree 4.2, but I'd guess this is a passing
problem.)
Is this analysis correct? Are there other problems I missed? Where do you
suggest I go from here to get this straightened out? (Before this, I received
a mail from developer relations saying (quote) "Please go ahead and package
the ATI drivers, just include all the readme's from our install package."
(end quote), but I thought it was too vague and requested some sort of proper
license. Could this be taken as a `license' so we could simply go ahead and
distribute it in non-free without signing anything anyhow, or is it too
weak?)
/* Steinar */
--
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/
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