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On Wed, Jan 06, 2010 at 10:57:01AM -0800, Greg KH wrote: |
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> On Tue, Jan 05, 2010 at 11:55:49PM -0500, Vincent Launchbury wrote: |
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> > Greg KH wrote: |
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> > > And note, _I_ placed those images in the kernel image, after consulting |
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> > > lawyers about this issue, so it's not like I don't know what I am |
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> > > talking about here. |
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> > |
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> > I'm not questioning whether it's legal to distribute non-free firmware |
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> > alongside the GPL. I'm merely saying that the firmware _is_ non-free, |
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> > which should be reflected by the ebuild licenses. |
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> |
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> So you are saying that the license for the kernel should show the |
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> license for all of the different firmware files as well? |
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If all the different firmware files get installed, then yes. |
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> That would get |
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> pretty unusable, and keep the kernel from being able to be installed on |
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> anyone's machine that didn't want such licenses, right? |
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> |
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> Also note that the license of the firmware files do not matter to almost |
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> everyone using the kernel, as almost no one uses those files anymore, |
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> the ones in the linux-firmware package should be used instead. |
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Right, which is why at the same time it would be useful to have an |
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option to not install those files. There's no problem with USE |
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conditionals in LICENSE; LICENSE="GPL-2 firmware? ( freedist )" or |
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expanded further would be fine, and simply nuke those files on install |
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with USE="-firmware". |
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> So as we are a source-based distro, if you object to those firmware |
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> licenses, just don't build them in your kernel builds. But to expect to |
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> list all of them as the license for the whole kernel package, that's not |
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> a workable solution as far as I can see. |
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The kernel sources are unusual in that they install the sources, and the |
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user is responsible for configuration and compilation. For anything |
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built from an ebuild, the license of unused parts of the source code |
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shouldn't matter, but here all of the source files of the kernel get |
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installed. |
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> > > So it's a pointless effort. |
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> > |
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> > To you maybe, but it's important to some. Note that updating the |
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> > licenses would only affect those with strict ACCEPT_LICENSE settings |
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> > anyway. I don't understand why you'd oppose the change. |
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> |
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> So you want anyone with such strict settings to not be able to install |
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> the kernel package at all? If so, what kernel do you want them to be |
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> able to use? :) |
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The GPL-2 licensed parts of all the kernel packages -- so probably |
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everything that matters -- could be installed with |
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ACCEPT_LICENSE="GPL-2" with my above suggestion. |
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