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GPL violations threat is quite realGPL violations threat is quite realPosted Jun 5, 2008 18:51 UTC (Thu) by zlynx (subscriber, #2285)In reply to: GPL violations threat is quite real by dwmw2 Parent article: Moving the firmware out
Firmware is a bit weird. You don't even know that it's code. It could be FPGA config or a particular set of switch settings just like setting registers but all in a lump. It's always seemed a bit dishonest to me to claim firmware must be GPL'd or out while at the same time accepting driver code that uses NDA provided or reverse engineered register settings. Those register settings could be in some way also code. Just think of it as register settings and card state, no different than sending a mysterious 32 byte blob that you don't understand but the VGA output doesn't work without it.
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GPL violations threat is quite real Posted Jun 6, 2008 7:20 UTC (Fri) by njs (guest, #40338) [Link] If a particular blob is just a bunch of switch settings, then it's unlikely that it's copyrightable -- both because there's nothing expressive about it, and because it's required to achieve a given functionality (there's no other way to set up the card except to send those particular bytes). Similarly, information provided under an NDA is not protected by copyright (because information is never protected by copyright, only expression). In this case, there's no GPL issue. Most firmware, though, is far more complex than that, and clearly copyrightable, and thus copyrighted. In this case, there may be a GPL issue. Any particular blob falls into one or the other of these cases, and *which* case it falls into is determined entirely by the law, the particular circumstances, and, ultimately, a judge. The result may or may not be "dishonest", but it is what it is; how we decide to "think of it" just doesn't matter, unfortunately...
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