On Sun, Mar 28, 2004 at 07:27:33PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > Sven Luther wrote: > > > Well, the solution would be to force add the miboot stuff to the > > > debian-installer svn tree, and use it to build. This would make > > > debian-installer contrib/non-free though, which is why i asked for > > > debain-legal help. > > > > > > Note that one solution for this would be to make an exception for such > > > bootloader stuff, and have them in the debian-installer SVN, in a > > > boot-loader directory or something, and use them directly. This will not > > > break autobuild, and everything would be fine, except when you upload > > > said stuff to main. > > > > That would violate the TOS for alioth. Do not check non-free code into > > the d-i subversion repository.
> Well, the main point is, can you really speak about code when you are > contemplating a 1k boot-sector, which is why i have CCed debian-legal, > but got no response yet. Legally, yes, you probably can. But that's not really the main point, since we've also seen that miBoot is currently not buildable using a free toolchain, and I get the impression that no one thinks this can be fixed before sarge's release. Whether or not the boot block is non-copyrightable (and therefore free), miBoot will not meet the criteria for main in time for sarge, and we will need some infrastructure to support contrib/non-free bits for d-i (which will mean images also not in main). Joey Hess's suggestion seems like a good one. > Also, i wonder how free a free replacement could be, if in order to work > it would have to be exactly the same as the one in question here. Do we > really need to consider source code for this one ? And in this case, > what would the source code of a small binary sector look like ? > I thought that copyright mat not apply to such cases, where there is > only one way of making this kind of stuff work, and where the bit > sequence is accordying short. 1k is definitely long enough to be copyrightable in prose and poetry. I don't know of any counterexamples in programming. The FSF requires copyright assignment for any contributions of *source* greater than 7 lines. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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