On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Nicolas Pitre <n...@cam.org> wrote: > On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, David Brownell wrote: > > > On Monday 15 June 2009, Nicolas Pitre wrote: > > > On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, David Brownell wrote: > > > > > > > On Sunday 14 June 2009, Nicolas Pitre wrote: > > > > > Now... who can make that call? Is there someone with code in > OpenOCD > > > > > who is against such a relicensing? > > > > > > > > Not the right process. Every OpenOCD copyright holder must > explicitly > > > > agree. Lack-of-NAK is not the same thing as agreement. They > contributed > > > > under a particular legal agreement. They can agree to change it > later. > > > > It can't be changed for them. > > > > > > I'm looking for the easy solution first, that is, if only _one_ person > > > provides a NACK then we simply forget about this relicensing idea right > > > away (unless someone is willing to strip out that person's code and > > > rewrite it which is silly IMHO). > > > > Well, there's the "immediate NAK" from folk currently on this > > mailing list; yes, that'd rule it out quickly! > > > > But lacking one of those it's not a "go" either. That rough list > > had over fifty names and getting the corporate approvals is rarely > > fast even if it does happen. I suspect FSF would not be keen on > > relicensing this particular exception, to pick just one name. > > However, considering that the oldest version of OpenOCD as published by > Dominic Rath, the initial author, did contain support for ftd2xx > already, it would be hard to dispute the fact that this wasn't the > initial author's intention to allow this usage. And subsequent > contributors didn't complain about this either, so they could be > considered to have agreed implicitly to that exception as well. And > given the visibility and importance of the ftd2xx library usage (it was > listed in the documentation from the beginning, etc.) then those > contributors won't be able to claim in good faith that they didn't know > about the existence of that lib and its nature and retroactively revoke > their consent after all that time (in practice they actually might not > have noticed nor considered the issue and if they had known it then > might not have agreed to the situation but that's not easily > defendable). > > So, I don't think it is clear at all given those facts if distribution > of OpenOCD that can use the libftd2xx, which on Windows is installed > from a separate package, is actually illegal or not. The situation is > probably just as gray and disputable as proprietary modules on Linux: > their usage is tolerated while their legality remains uncertain and is > likely to remain so for quite a while. >
Most all drivers on Windows are installed from separate packages. Some come in the box, some from Windows Update and some from third parties. Note that the WHQL certified FTDI drivers are available on Windows Update - which can be seen as an extension of the set of drivers that come "in the box". Now you can argue whether "Windows Update" is part of the normal distribution mechanism for Windows. Orin.
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