Robert Millan wrote:
On Tue, Jul 27, 2004 at 07:35:52AM +0100, Simon Kelley wrote:Robert Millan wrote:Package: atmel-firmware Severity: serious The following files aren't either .rom files or .h files as required by the upstream license. images/*.bin images.usb/*.binThe files are "binary image files" as specified by the license.That's not accurate, the license reads: /* Firmware is redistributed in object code only, specifically, only */ /* in two file formats: (a) .h header file; or (b) .rom binary image file; */ IANAL, but it seems to me the files should be .rom files.
What difference would it make? In fact the Debian project redistributes .deb files (or .iso images, for that matter.) Since I can't put atmel-firmware.rom into the package pool, by your interpretation Debian cannot distribute this stuff at all.
Recall that in the part of my reply which you deleted, I stated that the files have to have specific names ending in .bin once they are in the /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware directory, since those names are hard-coded into every copy of the Linux kernel which includes the atmel driver.
I think that the intention of the license is absolutely clear: it takes serious pedantry to see a problem here.Our interpretation of Atmel Corporation's intention is not relevant in court.
Of course our interpretation is relevant. Geeks (myself included) are used to writing instructions and rules which get run on CPUs and CPUs are dumb, so we get used to being very clear and covering every corner case. But laws aren't like that: the fundamental unit used to interpret laws is not a CPU, it's a "reasonable person". I contend that no reasonable person could interpret Atmel's license other than to allow the package as it stands.
Try this Gedanken-experiment: would you still consider the license to be violated of the files were named *.rom in the package and then renamed as *.bin by the postinst script? If so why do you think that a slightly different way of achieving exactly the same result violates the license? How about if the package contained the original C header files, and the postinst script generated .bin files from those?
Atmel orignally released the firmware in the form of .h files which include the copyright as a C comment. The purpose of the "binary image file" clause is to allow the firmware to be distributed in the more useful form of a binary image, which is neccessarily stripped of the copyright notice in each file, provided that the copyright notice is included in the _package_ containing the files. That's what second paragraph is about.[1] This isn't guesswork on my part, it's firm knowledge. I know because I put a large amount of personal effort into kicking the legal department at Atmel into doing it.
See my comment above about computers versus reasonable people. I think you've fallen into that trap; it's very common around here.My level of pedantry isn't either.
Looks like we disagree on this. Please bring this up in debian-legal. If they agree with you, I will find reasonable to close this bug.
CC'd Cheers, Simon. [1] "Any reproduction of Firmware must contain the above copyrightnotice, this list of conditions and the below disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution"