On Mon, 22 Sep 2003, Steve Langasek wrote: >On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 11:56:27AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: >> Le lun 22/09/2003 ? 09:46, Glenn Maynard a ?crit : >> > On Mon, Sep 22, 2003 at 08:47:26AM +0200, Thomas Hood wrote: >> > > IBM distributes the Linux driver and the binaries in a tarball that >> > > it says is licensed under the GPL. >> > > http://oss.software.ibm.com/acpmodem/ >> > > No source code is provided for the DSP binaries. (N.B., past >> > > discussions of this issue have reached the conclusion that such >> > > software can nevertheless be distributed in main.)
>> > If it's licensed under the GPL, and no source is provided, then it can >> > not be distributed at all, not even in non-free, unless there never was >> > source to begin with. (I assume this isn't the case, as you said "no >> > source code is provided", not "no source code exists".) >> If the binaries were entirely written using assembly code, the binary >> here equates the source. >assembly != machine language. If it's written in assembly, the >source is still assembly, not a binary (despite assembly sometimes >/appearing/ to be binary gibberish :). It depends. If there a mutual one-to-one correspondence between assembler line and DSP processor command it is, mainly, a differences in format. You may disassemble binary and pretends that this is a source code.