On Thu, Jun 17, 2004 at 06:03:16PM +0000, Jim Marhaus wrote: > Traditionally people have erred on the side of caution in interpreting free > licenses, following the wishes of the copyright holder and looking to the > license's author for guidance. In this case the FSF indicates the binary > firmware may violate the GPL. Kernel copyright holders also claim this, as > well > as some legally knowledgeable folks within Debian. Isn't Debian better served > by removing the potentially infringing files than playing lawyer and trying to > justify the infringement?
You speak as if this has no negative effects. In fact, it does. By removing, let's say, the tg3 driver, you make Debian unusable for a large percentage of users. Those users turn to other distributions who, strangely, have much better paid legal counsel than Debian. Surely if anyone should be concerned, it's one with a half-billion dollar market capitalisation rather than one with tens of thousands in its bank account. -- "Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." -- Mark Twain
