On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 08:23:19PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: > The question is not whether you > extract the work later, but whether the collective work is governed by > the GPL.
I agree that this is the question. > Copyright covers creative content, not mechanical > transformations, so whether the firmware is in an ASCII format -- > suitable for input to a compiler -- or a binary format -- suitable for > loading as part of a kernel module, userspace module, or Windows > device driver -- is irrelevant. This criteria is met -- what linux does with the firmware is more than just cat $firmware >>$kernel. > I (and others, including Linus) believe that is sufficient to qualify > as mere aggregation: the firmware defines a very clear and strong > interface. Does Linus agree with you? > This is in contrast to the executable parts of a kernel > module, which have no limits in the kernel's address space. To borrow > the US federal court idea of abstraction, filtration and comparison, > you can define a very abstract (high-level) interface for firmware; > you cannot do so for most modules because they depend so closely on > the rest of the kernel. In Computer Associates International Inc. v. Altai Inc., you've got a complete re-implementation. There had been copyright violation earlier, but Altai agreed that that was copyright violation and re-implemented the parts in question. The "Abstraction, Filtration, Comparison" test was used to determine whether or not the result -- after rewriting the infringing parts -- was a derivative work. I don't think there's any question about the the firmware when distributed outside the context of the linux kernel, so this doesn't seem very interesting. -- Raul
