Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266582AbUITOQF (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:16:05 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S266585AbUITOQF (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:16:05 -0400 Received: from clock-tower.bc.nu ([81.2.110.250]:51415 "EHLO localhost.localdomain") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266582AbUITOQA (ORCPT ); Mon, 20 Sep 2004 10:16:00 -0400 Subject: Re: WRT54G From: Alan Cox To: Aiko Barz Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To: <20040919095857.GD17602@lain.chroot.de> References: <20040919095857.GD17602@lain.chroot.de> Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <1095686020.26647.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.4.6 (1.4.6-2) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 14:13:42 +0100 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1893 Lines: 43 On Sul, 2004-09-19 at 10:58, Aiko Barz wrote: > Hi there! > > It's the wrt54g subject again... > I'm mirroring the Sveasoft-firmware, which was published under the > terms of "GPL". At least Sveasoft said that. Can you prove they said that ? > This site http://www.linksys.com/support/gpl.asp also implies, that i > can redistribute those drivers and firmwares. But it is the same > problem with them. Those wrt54g-firmwares also contain non-GPL > sourcecodes and binaries. It's up to Linksys what license they grant you for their non-free stuff. If its linked with GPL stuff then it might be GPL because its a derivative work. Sveasoft's only business is code they own the copyright to themselves and didn't give other people rights to redistribute (or gave them specifically revokable rights to distribute) > Sveasoft is hunting down mirrorsites right now. Of course, they want > to earn some money. So i'm not sure what I should do next?! > Going down or asking for the rest of the code? That depends what they said about the code and what you can prove about it. Sveasoft's evil claws extend only to code they themselves own copyright to and have not already granted things like GPL rights too (or any other irrevocable right). It highlights the dangers of relying on a partially proprietary software stack, as well as why Richard Stallman always asks vendors of Linux and other free software products that if they also bundle non-free software it is easy to tell which is which. Hence Debian has a seperate non-free archive, Fedora is open source only but there are third party yum repositories for non-free products and so on. Alan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/