GPL in ROM

I remember long discussions on Usenet about the PC card and that it was not really a PC card but more a “DOS and Windows 3.1 and partly Windows 95” card.

Never had any problems setting up Win95 on the card – then again going home and doing IT wasn’t a great stretch of brain cells.

Two ways I would expect that GPL code could be safely used in ROM.

A module stored in resourcesFS. (This can be no different to one supplied in an archive, surely?)

A 2nd ROM that works like a podule ROM containing GPL modules. (The system would need to be usable without it, I would think).

A module stored in resourcesFS. (This can be no different to one supplied in an archive, surely?)

Should do the job.

A 2nd ROM that works like a podule ROM containing GPL modules. (The system would need to be usable without it, I would think).

Will do the job :)

Re. ResourceFS : the question, of course, is would said module be “important” enough to warrant being given space in the ROM image. It would have to make quite a convincing case, as most stuff can be softloaded during boot.

Re. a 2nd ROM : I think it would be complicated to arrange a 2nd ROM behaviour. At first I thought “no problems, just load the file into a Dynamic Area and scan through it as if it was a podule”. Then I remember the module init/scanning order and, well, no. We won’t even have an active filesystem at that point in time, such a thing could only be done once the core of RISC OS is up and running, which means firstly that you could not start a replacement module in preference to an existing one (as is possible with podule modules), and given this, such a thing is somewhat pointless to implement as by this time it would be just as easy to softload them instead of trying to do complicated weirdness.

This is why Simon’s thoughts of making a better USB stack failed. It is potentially hazardous to include GPL code in the ROM image as a normal module, and it is potentially hazardous (in a different sense) to initialise a different USB stack after the original has started, filesystems mounted etc. To be useful, it would need to be in-ROM replacing the current USB code. Only the licence is not compatible. Conundrum! :-)

I think, for the majority of cases, the first question before asking about ways to combine GPL with RISC OS is to consider “do this need to be in the ROM?”. If you can have a useable system without those components present, they can probably go on disc and be softloaded in the boot sequence… If so, it’s a much simpler way forward.

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Bigger better reply this evening. For now, be aware that English people tend to find some of those words extremely offensive. Tone it down, please.

Don’t forget that people have the right to dual licence code. This means that you might see the code under the GPL, but it might also be legitimately used elsewhere under a different licence.

So, just because you see GPL code and you see it used somewhere else without the source being opened, don’t assume automatically that there is a licence violation.

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One thing i know is that they put kind of markers in some open source libs, under form of obscure array,

Yeah, what are we, twelve? :-)

i think macosX use mostly BSD kind of open source things.

I think Apple are waking up to the dangers of GPL. They offer GPL source, but it is an ever decreasing amount.
http://meta.ath0.com/2012/02/05/apples-great-gpl-purge/

Applying GPL to this situation would mean media player should be GPL because it use a directshow codec made with xvid :)

GPL applies to Linux.
Anything else is replete with quirks and is full of misery. You’ll notice that RISC OS (the core OS) is a completely GPL free zone. This is not by accident. Nor, I suppose, is it by accident that the GPL grew up in a GPL environment where everything was all GPL and, as such, the licence is intended to keep the GPL environment “pure” and “untainted” (their words, not mine – just ask the Linux kernel for status if you init a non-GPL module). Nobody invested in the GPL ecology much cares about other OSs or other ways of doing things.

stricly speaking, even a compiled binary is source code. It’s machine code, that can be put back to assembly form

The difference is that source code can be read, understood, and modified without undue hardship. Anybody who has tried to modify a disassembly (with all those lovely automatically generated references) will know that there is a world of difference between a source and a binary.
Also, for most people, a disassembly looks nothing whatsoever like the original source – which was probably some higher level language than a raw memory dump.

so i do everything in assembly and i take GPL code from compiled binaries and integrate them in my assembly program, and i release my source under the form of a compiled binary.

Uh… No comment.

Note that even stuff written in assembler can be dramatically different to the source. Try RISC OS for example. Look how many macros there are. Look how many things have names (readable, logical names). Look how many things have comments for points that might need elaborating, like why we’re doing this instead of that.
Even from assembly to assembly, the result does not match the source adequately to be called “source”. Well, BASIC module excepted, perhaps. ;-)

either it’s hobbying and well it doesn’t really matter the license,

I’m guessing you don’t quite have a grasp of copyright law yet. The “software” is protected by copyright (in sane modern countries). This is automatic and does not require registration (in sane modern countries, except the United States). Your rights to make use of the “software” (be it source or executable) is based upon the acceptance of the conditions of the licence upon which the “software” is offered. Failure to abide by the terms is a copyright infringement, technically the same as downloading a movie or music without paying for it – though most software authors are a little less rabid than the movie studios tend to be.
You don’t have any other rights to do anything to the software unless provided to you by the copyright owner or the copyright owner tacitly agrees to certain uses (such as Facebook sharing pictures that you upload – the copyright is still yours, but by signing up you agree that Facebook can reproduce your “property” for the purposes of sharing it as you wish).

The GNU organisation can – and does – follow up on reported GPL violations. There is a website for reporting such things. Because “stealing” something that is “free” is crass and a slap in their face.

I disagree with the ethos of the GPL, its blatant attempt to subvert the phrase “derivative works” to try to lay claim to a lot of code that it has no right touching, and the lunatic weirdos that treat the GPL as some sort of crusade (I can imagine them singing “Onward Stallman’s Soldiers! Marching as to war!”).
So what do I do? I just don’t use GPL licenced code in or with my own code.
Simple.
It’s not the only game in town.

if people start to close source on some package, it could break the dependency etc ok, i can understand the logic.

I don’t think that’s the point they’re aiming for. I think they don’t want the efforts of the many to be bundled into a locked down device that is closed to users and covered in a dozen patents. Consider a mobile phone. How many have an unlocked bootloader? Consider set top boxes. How many come with source code someplace? Try, even, your broadband router. Orange (France) releases source code for the GPL components of the Livebox, but it is that and only that. Pretty useless, you can’t build a custom Livebox firmware. How does one even jailbreak a modern Livebox these days? Hooking up serial tty to log in as “root” (password “1234” (!)) hasn’t worked in a while.
GPL is attempting to keep systems based upon open software open. I can understand that. But in doing so, it is often overstepping the mark.

So what’s this guy problem ?

That he bothered to read the licence text?

So he can perfectly retro engineer the thing, and provide a GPL replacement for the part, i really don’t see in the case in what it disturb him or the GPL community.

Yeah.

About that.

He is from the “RISC OS Ltd” camp, and the violation was from the “Castle” (now ROOL) camp. Historically, the two have not exactly been close to each other.
Let’s just say that if we all had guns, there would be no winners, just a heck of a lot of corpses.

Yes, we have all lost as a result. We have the modern RISC OS, but huge amounts of work were also done to “the other branch” is what now appears to be a dead end, possibly even a lost cause. Work that could benefit us (and also those who prefer and supported the other version(s)). There was recently a thread about it (winning the lottery…) and I feel the general opinion is that the ideal way forward is to reunite the two branches to create the “ultimate” version of RISC OS with all the best features of both running on the nice new hardware. And… the general opinion is that hell would probably freeze over first.
Like I said. A heck of a lot of corpses.
Go cry. It is appropriate.

something that could really have a negative impact on the development of GPL products in itself.

I’m afraid that where I stand, the biggest impediment to GPL is the GPL itself. It absolutely does not play well alongside other licences. The linking thing is balls, it should be a non-issue and I would love to see it thrown out of court. Maybe, just maybe, without that, we could consider the GPL to be a worthwhile OSI Open Source licence alongside the others (your religion of choice, if you prefer). Until then, GPL is toxic.

There were good people in the debian team during a time,

Debian… Isn’t that the flavour of Linux that believes so strongly in freedom and openness that the default operating system can’t play MP3s (patent encumbered, non-free) without entering the following easy to remember command: sudo apt-get install libav-tools libavcodec-extra-53 libavdevice-extra-53 libavfilter-extra-2 libavformat-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 libpostproc-extra-52 libswscale-extra-2 flashplugin-nonfree ttf-mscorefonts-installer icedtea-plugin … what, are they just showing off that their command line is better than DOS? That’s hardly a challenge. :-P

i wonder if let say i would wrap the glibC in a cgi file

…there comes a point where it is probably less bother to just “roll your own” (the routines you need, not an entire CLib), or find an equivalent that you can use.

(in sane modern countries, except the United States)

There you go, fixed your error ;-)

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(in sane modern countries, except the United States)

There you go, fixed your error ;-)

You got in before me. I was going to point out that the word “tautology” covered that sentence.

Thanks for the correction. ;-)

Just in case anybody is wondering why I specifically exempted the US in the first place…

In general, modern copyright is handled by the Berne Convention which applies in over 180 states/countries/territories. Wikipedia says: Copyright under the Berne Convention must be automatic; it is prohibited to require formal registration.

America, however, joined in 1988 and went and did their own thing in several notable ways.

Firstly, copyright is automatic in the US but without a registration you won’t get anywhere trying to sue anybody for copyright infringement, which basically destroys the point of automatic copyright.

No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.

[source: http://copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#register ]

Also, perhaps more worryingly is that the “country where copyright law applies” is a lot harder to determine online.

In the internet age, publication online may be considered publication in every sufficiently internet-connected jurisdiction in the world. It is not clear what this may mean for determining “country of origin”. In Kernel v. Mosley, a U.S. court “concluded that a work created outside of the United States, uploaded in Australia and owned by a company registered in Finland was nonetheless a U.S. work by virtue of its being published online”. However other U.S. courts in similar situations have reached different conclusions, e.g. Håkan Moberg v. 33T LLC.

[source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention ]

“nonetheless a U.S. work by virtue of its being published online” is a blatantly unfair decision to have reached for content that had no direct connection to the US other than “it was online” plus (and more importantly) America’s rather different behaviour with regards to the spirit of the Berne convention.

It’s a complicated mess designed to look ever more complicated so lawyers can justify their wages. ;-)

Tautology… Isn’t that what happens after Christmas when you’ve eaten too much chocolate and your clothes no longer fit? You’re suffering from tautology? :-P

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It’s not written in the gpl that the code must understood by everyone either is it ?

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that i prefer to use the GPL product from it’s binary form and do my modification directly from this assembly, then what i deliver as binary is close to identical to source code.

The GPL states:

The “source code” for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.

and

The “Corresponding Source” for a work in object code form means all the source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those activities.

and:

The Corresponding Source for a work in source code form is that same work.

You might be able to work directly on an assembler binary; but you might struggle to have people believe you when you say that you will be writing code directly in a disassembler and that the executable is the source.

Oh, and you can’t modify the LibC or else you’ll need to distribute (or offer another way) the LibC source plus the way to regenerate your modifications so that a person can take your “source” and build a binary identical copy of the executable from said “source”. The word “source” in scare quotes as I’m not sure how you would do this if such source (as it would conventionally be understood) doesn’t exist…

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I mean by that, there is no really any other source to show than what the guy who is complaining about the license is already viewing from his disassembly.

Were you around the RISC OS scene when the alleged violations were pointed out? As I recall, it was a lot more complex than you’re making out, and Justin was said to have more evidence than just the similarity between a couple of disassemblies.

While I didn’t agree with some of the things Justin said and did, I’m with him 100% on the licence issue. If he suspected that there was GPL-licensed code in the closed RISC OS ROMs, then he was right to call it out – just as I called out ROOL a couple of years ago when I found them breaching my licence terms in the alpha R-Pi images.

And i mean even in the bottom do gpl really make sense today, with high speed internet everywhere, you put a source code online on the internet, what do you expect, and if even some code was really so novel and so useful , a big company could have enough resource to refactor it, and the lawyer to make it stand in a court, so in the bottom it’s more bothering than anything.

I suspect that you probably need to read up on copyright law…

All software is copyright its author, and if they release it they get to choose what licence they put it under. If code is licensed under the GPL, then presumably that’s the author’s wish: it’s not for you to decide that their intention is irrelevant. If the licence doesn’t allow you to use the code as you intend, then you don’t use it.

Personally, I’d not use the GPL for any software that I had control over the release terms of. That said you’ll find code of mine licensed as GPL2, and if you chose to re-use any of it I’d expect to see the terms of that licence honoured.

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Calling is a use. Linking an inclusion.

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If you would make a dynamic module loader that would recognize some imports such as http url and resolve the function address to an internal routine to handle these call

No need for that. A C Unix software can load a lib at runtime without being linked to it (old trick, still working).

Big headache for lawyer

No. They’ll just modify the licence to include this change.