Re: Keyspan Firmware fun
On Fri, Apr 27, 2001 at 09:24:54PM -0700, Adam J. Richter wrote:
> I do not believe the keyspan_usa*_fw.h files are illegal by
> themselves. However, compiling them, keyspan.c and 402 other include
> files generates a keyspan.o file that has content covered by many
> different copyrights.
Ah, now I see why you are saying that.
> In order to copy that keyspan.o file, generally, you need
> permission from each of the copyright owners. Many of them have given
> you permission, as stated by in the contents of those files or in text
> that accompanies them, such as the BSD copying conditions. It can be
> argued that Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox and perhaps others have aso given
> you permission by some of their statements on this issue. However,
> the other copyright owners who put their code under the version 2 of
> the GNU General Public License have not granted you this permission.
> That is, the GPL does not give you permission to copy a file whose
> contains further restrictions beyond the GPL, and, to the best of my
> knowledge, these authors have not given you or the public at large
> permission to copy the files without meeting the requirements of the
> GPL. Therefore, copying the resulting keyspan.o files infringes the
> copyrights owned by the authors of any other GPL'ed any content that
> keyspan.o comprises, and there are many such copyright owners.
Thanks for a description of why you feel this way. I understand your
comments better now.
> You might wonder why am I also concerned about distribution
> of the kernel _sources_. First of all, I believe that there may be a
> contributory infringement problem with machinations (my word) where
> the end result is the delivery of a work whose distribution is
> forbidden by copyright. In the case of the stock kernel, the build
> process does this for the keyspan.o file. Secondly, I think there may
> be an indirect or contributory infringement issue from distributing
> such kernel sources with the reasonable expectation that many
> recipients will compile and unknowingly illegally copy keyspan.o
> as a result.
Thanks, I understand your concerns, and am glad you brought all of this
up. Hopefully by working with people from Keyspan, this can be resolved
soon.
greg k-h
Reply to: