Originally Posted by nwhitfield:
“There's a possibility that the actual kernel isn't from Humax themselves but from Broadcom, who make the 7403 chip that powers the box, and they'll have done a lot of the hard work making things like the disk IO work on their chip - it makes it much easier to sell it as a solution to other people.”
I think that is entirely likely given the kernel version string.
Quote:
“That's not to say, of course, that bits of that reference code that are subsequently modified shouldn't themselves be published by Humax, if it was GPL code (and if they did indeed use material supplied by Broadcom for low-level functions). But it does help make things a little murkier with regard to where fault ultimately lies.
In the case of NEC's chips, for example, as far as I can see, some of the low level information is only available under NDA, and that presumably raises an interesting conflict - if a company has signed a contract that precludes them from publishing information about the programming interfaces for a chip, but has used some open source material, and modified it to work with information they obtained under NDA, what should they do? Uphold GPL, or break the NDA?”
or the third option - don't use the software if you can't use it legally. If I decided to build a set-top box on a Windows platform, but Microsoft's licensing terms for Windows didn't suit me (possibly for legal reasons) does that mean I just ship Windows anyway?
Quote:
“The morally right thing, in the eyes of Open Source advocates, would be to break the NDA. But, in the absence of a real perceived threat of court action regarding the GPL, many companies will take the view that they're more likely to get into trouble by breaking a contract they signed with a major supplier, on whom they rely for their products, and the risk of a successful GPL action is much smaller.”
Breaking the NDA is not the morally right thing to do. If neither of two options is legal or moral, find a third... if as a company you bind yourself in conflicting contracts, you may just have to negotiate your way out.
In any event, it's not just a moral issue, it's a legal matter in relation to copyright law. There is no automatic right in law to copy and distribute copyrighted material. If someone has copied the kernel and distributed within their set-top boxes, they can only do this legally with permission from the copyright owner (as with any software). This permission is given by the GPL to all users of the code subject to certain conditions. If they do not wish to comply with the conditions, they have no right to distribute the code.
In practice, the issue with NDA materials is usually avoided by the use of the loadabale module support in the kernel - the official view is that is legitimate (in GPL terms) to write proprietary kernel modules distributed alongside the kernel but not compiled into it, and that is how the issue would normally be handled for specialist hardware drivers.
I'm not sure that there have been any UK court cases in relation to the GPL yet, but I haven't seen any significant legal doubt that the terms would be held valid in the UK.
Quote:
“It's very easy to castigate companies and say "They must make source available," but in practical terms it can often by far less clear cut than that.”
I don't want to castigate anyone - I want to encourage them - with the GPL you get to read the licence terms before you have to comply with them. You have a free choice, and if you don't like the conditions, there's no need for you to use Linux - you can buy commercial operating systems from other people if that's what you want.
This is all a bit offtopic, and I suppose this is not the thread for a "merits of the GPL" argument - that's what the Linux kernel licence is, and you have to take it or leave it on that basis!
Last edited by DrCabbage : 01-01-2009 at 23:19
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