On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 05:43:44PM -0800, William Chops Westfield wrote:
> On Sunday, Jan 25, 2004, at 12:02 US/Pacific, Byron A Jeff wrote:
>
> >
> >According to the letter, legitimate profit making software companies
> >and
> >developers are being forceably GPLed by Open Source developers.
> >
> This seems to be true to a certain extent.   Along the lines of "we've
> shown that cisco (linksys) routers contain staticly linked GPL'ed code,
> therefore we demand that the entire source be released."

But that's a pot-kettle-black situation. The GPL is specific that if
you use GPLed code you must release the source. So if you include
GPL code, you get what you get.

You can't have it both ways. It's not possible to have free software
except when you don't want it to be free. It's either one or the
other.

But I don't really see the big deal in terms of embedded systems.
Firmware in isolation isn't really going to help. You need hardware
to support it.

The real interesting question from an LGPL standpoint is does it
require the hardware to support firmware updates. I mean I can give
you the source, and the tools to build a new executable. But if the
hardware doesn't facilitate loading the new software, have I
fulfilled my obligation to the LGPL? It's an interesting question.

>
> Thus the need for lawyers on the software company side, if they don't
> want to release all their source.  Note that a very small amount of
> GPL code can potentially contaminate a large amount of proprietary code.
> GPL evangelists WANT that, of course, but I doubt that it is best for
> most users...

If it's a small amount, there really isn't an issue. Simply rewrite the
GPL code, and keep it all proprietary.

The flip side is more interesting. If the majority of a project is
GPL code and a small amount of propritary code is added but the
whole thing is locked up. Shouldn't the FSF go after these folks?
They are violating the license.

BAJ

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