Re: Keyspan Firmware fun
Adam J. Richter <adam@yggdrasil.com>:
> 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.
Debian could patch the source so that the offending drivers are not
built by default and the documentation shown by make xconfig states
ALL IN CAPITALS that it would be a copyright violation to distribute
the binary if you include that driver (include a URL for more detailed
information and possible updates).
Would that solve the problem?
If not, how about
#error If you wish to compile this driver please read linux/...
(Of course there's still the other problem of the kernel not being
DFSG-free.)
Edmund
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