Re: [gNewSense-users] KFV: Detecting sourceless firmware

[Karl Goetz]

On Fri, 2008-04-11 at 10:12 +0300, Markus Laire wrote:
> Karl Goetz wrote:
> > On Fri, 2008-04-11 at 09:03 +0300, Markus Laire wrote:
> >> It seems that the current way of doing KFV-work by checking only the 
> >> license often leaves sourceless firmware marked as "free".
> >>
> >> Since there are only "few" files which have firmware compared to all 
> >> files whose license needs to be checked, it might be best to just 
> >> continue this way, and when licenses of all files have been checked, to 
> >> separately detect files which contain firmware and then check whether 
> >> they are sourceless or not.
> > 
> > I disagree.
> > sourceless firmware being marked free is usually a mistake of someone
> > not checking the licence completely - they see "GPL" and move on.
> 
> What about files which don't have any license?
> 
> http://wiki.gnewsense.org/Kernel/DocumentingYourWork says currently:
> "If there is no license" => "Assumed as part of the kernel, link to the 
> GPLv2"
> 
> Should this be modified to note that person must first check if the file 
> contains any binary data, and if it does and there is no source, to 
> report it as possible sourceless firmware?

*IMHO*
*firmware* should be assumed non-free and the copyright holder should be
consulted.
*code* can be assumedd to be part of the kernel (if you want to check
you should of course feel free to).

Remember any firmware that contains statements like "dont ask for source
code" or "dont try to change this" or "we have source, but you dont get
it" is non-free, whatever the licence.
kk

> 
> > Although it wont hurt to recheck firmware at the end, i dont think it
> > should be deliberately left out now.
> 
-- 
Karl Goetz <address@hidden>

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