Re: How long is it acceptable to leave *undistributable* files in the kernel package?

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

Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> writes:

> A little Google shows that Yggdrasil has made such an argument:
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/04/msg00130.html
>
> Unfortunately for Mr. Richter, Linux does not seem to contain any
> copyright notices attributable to him or Yggdrasil before 2000.  As I
> cited elsewhere, this is at least FOUR YEARS after firmware was
> included in the kernel, so he cannot fairly claim infringement.  He
> should have known that binary firmware existed in the kernel before.

Nonsense.  He made his code available to others under the GPL.  Those
others (Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Red Hat, etc) made a work derived
from his work and that of others and distributed it.  They violated
the  license they had from him when they did so.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu