Le lundi 03 novembre 2008 à 10:58 +0100, Loïc Minier a écrit : > And I can think of other data bits in the grey area. > > Consider SSL certificates for e.g. Verisign. It makes no sense to > change them and we don't have the ultimate source for them. These are > generated data files for which we have the tools to build them, but not > the ultimate source data (private key). And if we had the private key, > they would be worthless. These are effectively static data enabling > SSL communications with sites using these SSL certs providers. Since SSL certificates are randomly generated data, they are not subject to copyright law, so I don’t think they are in any grey area. We can change them without any licensing issue, it’s just that they won’t fulfill their job if we do. > Firmwares can be considered somewhat the same: static data enabling the > use of your hardware. You can perhaps change them. Perhaps we have > the tools to change them. Perhaps we can change them usefully. But > they are useful as such and we don't need to fight for their freedom as > we fight for the freedom of the main OS. Firmware images are very different. They are binary code, only code not meant for execution on the host CPU. They are similar to non-free data for games: stuff that we cannot modify and with which we can live without modifying, but it would be useful to be able to, and it is impossible to distribute it in main. Cheers, -- .''`. : :' : We are debian.org. Lower your prices, surrender your code. `. `' We will add your hardware and software distinctiveness to `- our own. Resistance is futile.
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