Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261392AbVDDVCd (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Apr 2005 17:02:33 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261424AbVDDU7r (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Apr 2005 16:59:47 -0400 Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:23438 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261400AbVDDUzi (ORCPT ); Mon, 4 Apr 2005 16:55:38 -0400 Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2005 16:55:27 -0400 From: "Theodore Ts'o" To: Sven Luther Cc: Greg KH , Michael Poole , debian-legal@lists.debian.org, debian-kernel@lists.debian.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: non-free firmware in kernel modules, aggregation and unclear copyright notice. Message-ID: <20050404205527.GB8619@thunk.org> Mail-Followup-To: Theodore Ts'o , Sven Luther , Greg KH , Michael Poole , debian-legal@lists.debian.org, debian-kernel@lists.debian.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20050404100929.GA23921@pegasos> <87ekdq1xlp.fsf@sanosuke.troilus.org> <20050404141647.GA28649@pegasos> <20050404175130.GA11257@kroah.com> <20050404182753.GC31055@pegasos> <20050404191745.GB12141@kroah.com> <20050404192945.GB1829@pegasos> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20050404192945.GB1829@pegasos> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1857 Lines: 36 On Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 09:29:45PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > > Nope, i am aiming to clarify this issue with regard to the debian kernel, so > that we may be clear with ourselves, and actually ship something which is not > of dubious legal standing, and that we could get sued over for GPL violation. > You know, the fact that Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, and pretty much all other commercial distributions have not been worried about getting sued for this alleged GPL'ed violation makes it a lot harder for me (and others, I'm sure) take Debian's concerns seriously. The problem may be that because Debian is purely a non-profit, and so it can't clearly balance the costs and benefits of trying trying to avoid every single possible risks where someone might decide to file a lawsuit. Anytime you do *anything* you risk the possibility of a lawsuit, and if you allow the laywers to take over your business decisions, the natural avoid-risks-all-costs bias of lawyers are such that it will either drive a company out of business, or drive a non-profit distribution into irrelevance..... If Debian wants to be this fanatical, then let those Debian developers who care do all of the work to make this happen, and stop bothering LKML. And if it continues to remain the case that a user will have to manually edit /etc/apt/sources.lists (using vi!) to include a reference to non-free in order to install Debian on a system that requires the tg3 device driver, then I will have to tell users who ask me that they would be better off using some other distribution which actually cares about their needs. - Ted - 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/