On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 18:32, Michael Poole wrote: > Joe Wreschnig writes: > > > On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 17:18, Michael Poole wrote: > >> A little Google shows that Yggdrasil has made such an argument: > >> http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/04/msg00130.html > >> > >> Unfortunately for Mr. Richter, Linux does not seem to contain any > >> copyright notices attributable to him or Yggdrasil before 2000. As I > >> cited elsewhere, this is at least FOUR YEARS after firmware was > >> included in the kernel, so he cannot fairly claim infringement. He > >> should have known that binary firmware existed in the kernel before. > > > > I think it's fair to say he was misled by repeated statements that Linux > > was under the GPL, e.g. from README: > > > > It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the > > accompanying COPYING file for more details. > > > > Given the huge amount of code in Linux, it's very possible he didn't > > even see any of the non-GPLd code at first, and I would consider it > > totally reasonable to trust the README of a program at the outset. > > You, sir, beg the question. If you wish to argue in a non-circular > manner, please do so at any time. Do not expect the rest of us to > take your word that X is true simply because you claim X. > > (I expect you will need a definition for X: it is the claim that > including firmware blobs in the kernel is a violation of the GPL.)
Actually, my argument was that I don't think we can say Mr. Richter should have known about binary firmware in the kernel, because it's definitely not obvious from a cursory examination of the terms the kernel claims to be under. For the reason I believe firmware blobs licensed under GPL-incompatible terms compiled into the kernel are a violation of the GPL, read my reply to Thiemo. -- Joe Wreschnig <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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