Re: How long is it acceptable to leave *undistributable* files in the kernel package?
Frank Küster writes:
> Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
>
>>> [firmware as mere aggregation]
>>>> Kernel copyright holders think otherwise, as do many other people.
> [...]
>> 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.
>
> Is this relevant? He contributed code to a GPL'ed project, assuming that
> all of the project meets the license requirements. Do you expect every
> contributor to check the copyright status of every file in the project?
I expect that if a contributor has an uncommon interpretation of the
license requirements, he should check.
On top of that, one of the earliest places I can find that Richter
contributed code was in ... reworking the USB serial device support
(the very thing he complained infringed his copyrights). It makes me
wonder if he took debate lessons from debial-legal -- or vice versa.
Michael Poole
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