Re: [debian-knoppix] Re: Drivers
On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 09:13:50AM -0800, Stephen Samuel (leave the email alone) wrote:
> Klaus Knopper wrote:
> >On Sat, Nov 06, 2004 at 05:53:16AM +0000, Niall Walsh wrote:
>
> >Agreed, but apart from the "political/philosophical" problem with
> >proprietary
> >drivers, there are some technical issues:
> >
> >- With proprietary drivers, you can't easily fix security issues on your
> >own.
> > You can't even be sure about (accidentially, intentional) backdoors.
> >
> >- The way these "semi-proprietary" license of some drivers works, it is
> >easy
> > for the vendors to just CHANGE the license, not only in future, but also
> > in
> > the current versions. Imagine you have to inform thousands of Knoppix
> > users
> > that their CD just got illegal because of a third party license change.
>
> (( Note: IANAL))
>
> Without discouting your other issues, I don't think it's very
> likely unless the proprietary licenses reserve the right for the
> licensors to change the terms at will. Otherwise the same thing
> could happen with OSI licenses.
I think it makes a big difference if the author RESERVES rights, vs. he/she
GIVES AWAY rights. Proprietary licenses are designed to be subject to change
easily, sometimes this is even written in the license texts. The GPL and other
OSI licenses, once given away to the recipients of the software, are not so
easy to retract. I'm no lawyer, but this is my experience.
> Also: Copyright is the right to copy, so once a person has
No, copyright is NOT the right to copy. This belongs to a different
mailinglist, of course, but a copyright allows the authors of the software to
create their own license at will. Some include (exclusive/non-exclusive) rights
to copy and/or distribute software, some don't.
> a copy of the distribution there's really nothing that the
> copyright owners can do about it anyways.
Yes, they can. For non-OSI licenses they can restrict the right to copy and/or
use the software for "non-commercial", "non-military" etc. purposes, so the
copyright holder could sue the person who illegally distributed the software
(i.e. not license-conformant).
I have no control about what people do with Knoppix, so I have to make sure
that the licenses allow a wide range of applications, and that the individual
licenses are safe.
> The absolute worst
> they could do would be to force removal before further
> distribution (and I don't think they could even do that).
> Besides: If it were possible to do this, GLP and OSI licensors
> could, in thory, do the same thing.
No, because they gave away that right with the license they chose, instead of
reserving it for a specific target audience.
> Of course, IANAL, and I'm more up on common law (british system)
> than the various laws in Europe, but the basic provision is
> estoppel -- which is that if someone knowingly leads you to believe
> something in good faith and take action on that belief, they can't
> go jerking you around by pulling the rug out from under you.
I believe that "not knowing" about a legal fact does not keep you from being
punished anyways in Britain, as well as in all other countries.
> (this is a bit different from negotiating ambiguities where
> nobody ever explicitly resolves th ambiguities because of
> an implicit unwillingness to even go there).
Hmm... I don't want to go into ambuguities, true, if that's what you wanted to
point out. ;-)
Regards
-Klaus
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