From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 30623 invoked by alias); 26 Feb 2003 16:05:30 -0000 Mailing-List: contact ecos-maintainers-help@sources.redhat.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: ecos-maintainers-owner@sources.redhat.com Received: (qmail 30615 invoked from network); 26 Feb 2003 16:05:29 -0000 To: gary@mlbassoc.com Cc: ecos-maintainers@sources.redhat.com In-reply-to: <1046272511.31018.6102.camel@hermes.chez-thomas.org> (message from Gary Thomas on 26 Feb 2003 08:15:11 -0700) Subject: Re: Another copyright issue From: Bart Veer References: <1046272511.31018.6102.camel@hermes.chez-thomas.org> Message-Id: <20030226160243.95BD4EC6F1@delenn.bartv.net> Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 16:05:00 -0000 X-SW-Source: 2003-02/txt/msg00060.txt.bz2 >>>>> "Gary" == Gary Thomas writes: Gary> As part of one of the ports I've recently done, I had to Gary> add a couple of files which require special consideration. Gary> They are binary data, and only applicable to a particular Gary> device (nonetheless required to build RedBoot on the device Gary> since it needs them to initialize the hardware). Gary> The producer of the files (the hardware manufacturer) has Gary> allowed their use, but they want their copyright on them. Gary> I have amended this to look like this: Gary> // Gary> // Copyright (c) 2003 Intrinsyc Europe Ltd. All rights reserved. Gary> // Gary> // Redistribution and use in source or binary format is allowed Gary> // provided: Gary> // * This notice must be preserved Gary> // * The binary data which this file represents may only be Gary> // used on a NMI uPCI + uE250 based hardware platform. Gary> // Gary> which I believe preserves their use in the spirit of open source. Gary> Does anyone have a problem with this? I think we do have to be careful about this sort of thing. We don't want to get into a situation where people contribute HAL packages which are just prebuilt binaries, encoded in a big C array or similar. That sort of thing makes it impossible to customize the HAL for specific application requirements. The GPL uses the phrase "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it", and I think that is a good standard to work to. Now, there are certainly cases where you need to feed magic numbers to hardware or it won't work. I don't have a problem with that, within reason. In this case uE250_pci_bitstream.h is 389K and uE250_plx_bitstream.h is 130K. That seems like an awful lot of magic, more than the rest of the platform HAL. I would certainly like to understand why the platform needs such a large amount of magic. Bart