Re: Keyspan Firmware fun
Edmund GRIMLEY EVANS <edmundo@rano.org> writes:
>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?
I don't know what if any legal authorities exist on the
question of how unhelpful the system should be in order not to be
providing help in delivering the infringing work. Certainly, your
proposal would eliminate the second scenario about users accidentally
building the GPL-violating binary.
However, you don't have to impede your ezusb users so
much. You could apply my patch, add the programs in
ftp://ftp.yggdrasil.com/pub/dist/device_control/ezusb/ and configure
/sbin/hotplug per the instructions included with that software. Most
ezusb users should not notice. That, however, is just a bit of
unsolicited technical advice.
Adam J. Richter __ ______________ 4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104
adam@yggdrasil.com \ / San Jose, California 95129-1034
+1 408 261-6630 | g g d r a s i l United States of America
fax +1 408 261-6631 "Free Software For The Rest Of Us."
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