Re: GPLed firmware flasher ...
mbelow@antithese.de wrote:
>To the user, this doesn't appear as two separate works. He/she/it will
So what? This still does not make them derived.
>see one program with pre-loaded data. If you are using already
>existing, copyrighted data (the firmware), this means you are building
>your work on top of the data. This is a derived work, I'd say (this
WTF? This is so broad that could be applied to *anything*.
The important point is /how/ you are using that data.
>I think it is misleading if you think about the firmware as a program,
>which indeed doesn't communicate with the flasher. As far as I
>understand, the firmware that is being flashed doesn't run during
>operation of the flasher. I.e. it is being treated as data. And this
>data isn't treated "at arm's length", it is permanently incorporated
>into the executable.
But it's still data. The GPL is about code, not data.
>So I'd say you should either build the flasher in a more general,
>"arm's length" way (one flasher executable, potentially different data
>files). Or you should consider using the LGPL. It doesn't fit exactly,
>but it should come closer to what you want.
Or a GPL + exception, but I still do not believe that one is needed.
--
ciao,
Marco
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