Re: LCC and blobs

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Måns Rullgård <mru@inprovide.com> writes:

> Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
>> It doesn't matter if the manufacturer includes the CD.  If I buy the
>> card on eBay, the original owner may not have a license to
>> redistribute the firmware to me.
>
> That's a purely hypothetical situation.  Show me a case where someone
> has been convicted for selling used hardware, and including the driver
> CD.

Um.  It's not a crime, at least not where I live.

But show me a case where somebody has paid a penalty for distributing
GPL'd software without source, or lost a court case over it?  Oh, but
Debian follows the license there... why?  Because Debian is dedicated
to free software.

Similarly, we respect the licenses on non-free software.

If the firmware were free, Debian could ship it *and* the
driver.  Since it's not, we can't assume end users have it.  To do so,
we must require them to accede to provisions of third parties'
licenses in order to make use of Debian software.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu