Re: BOINC: lib/cal.h license issue agree with the DFSG?
Mike Hommey writes:
> On Sat, Jan 02, 2010 at 03:43:53PM -0800, Don Armstrong wrote:
>> On Sat, 02 Jan 2010, Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> > Francesco Poli wrote:
>> > > Where is this proprietary library distributed?
>> >
>> > In AMD website.
>> >
>> > If the user downloads it and installs it, BOINC will use it, and will be
>> > able to detect your ATI cards. In order to use the proprietary library, it
>> > uses the function declarations in the cal.h header distributed with the
>> > package.
>>
>> It seems like AMD should really be distributing these header files
>> with a maximum permissive license like MIT/Expat or similar. Perhaps
>> someone should contact them and try to get it to happen?
>
> Or maybe nobody should care, because they don't contain anything
> copyrightable ? (except maybe comments)
One can agree to, and be bound by, a license that has nothing to do with
copyright. Some open source software licenses (including, I believe,
some generally DFSG-compliant licenses) use contract-based structures to
impose limits on behaviors that are not reserved rights under copyright
law.
The license does not specifically prohibit reverse engineering, so
someone could (at least potentially, if they were careful enough) create
a compatible header file that did not fall under this license -- but no
one has done so, and until (a) someone does that and (b) these software
packages use that file instead of the current one, the license in the
current file is very relevant.
Michael Poole
Reply to: