Re: Debian-installer, older hardware, boot loaders, miboot & amiboot & ..

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Wed, Mar 31, 2004 at 03:17:42AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 10:56:25AM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 30, 2004 at 03:26:20AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> > > You don't need permission to reverse-engineer anything.
> > > 
> > > If we're going to talk to Apple, we should ask them to release the boot
> > > sector and anything else we need within the scope of this problem under
> > > a DFSG-compatible license.
> > 
> > Only problem would be if they don't have the source code for this 10+
> > year old little bit of code.
> 
> That's only conceivably a problem if we want to ask them to GPL or LGPL
> it.  We could ask for the stuff to be licensed under the MIT/X11
> license, including the source if they can find it.

Huh ? If it would be licenced under the MIT/X11 licence, there is no
need for the source code for us to distribute it ? This would be a good
solution. What about the later Apple licence ? 

Notice that the DFSG doesn't cope well with lost source code or lost
legal paperstuff needed to assertain (and modify) the licence. As was
shown in the case of the ocaml old-bignum case, whose licence ownership
was lost in the DEC -> Compaq -> HP mess.

In this case, would a disclaimer from HP as the potential IP holder be
enough for freeing the code, at least until someone else with the said
IP papers can come out and claim the copyright ? Especially when there
is assumption that such papers where irremedially lost. A nice
comparative of this is the AROS project, who were told by Amiga Inc to
be infringing the Amiga IP or whatever, but where Amiga Inc was never
able to come up with the papers supporting their claim, as it seems that
the amiga IP rights got lost somehow in the 10+ proprietary chain.
Probably someone left with them in their pocket during that time.

Friendly,

Sven Luther