Re: How aggressively should non-distributability bugs be dealt with?
Francesco Poli wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 16:22:06 -0700 Josh Triplett wrote:
>>Francesco Poli wrote:
>>>IMHO the best solution would be to contact the firmware copyright
>>>holder and persuade her to rilicense it under a GPL-compatible
>>>license (so that every doubt would go away immediately).
>>
>>This would not solve the problem, unless they also released the source
>>of the firmware. Without that source, the firmware would either be
>>non-distributable (if under a license like the GPL that requires
>>source) or non-free (if the license does not require source).
>
> Of course, releasing the source is an essential step of making something
> free.
> When I wrote "to r[e]license it under a GPL-compatible license" (and put
> a typo in it... :p ) I meant implicitly that source code should be
> provided also...
No problem. The only reason I mentioned it is that one of the many
facets of this issue involves firmware images supposedly licensed under
the GPL, but with no source provided. In these cases, even though the
license is Free, the firmware is non-distributable.
- Josh Triplett
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