On Sat, May 25, 2013 at 8:59 AM, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Il 23/05/2013 15:25, Peter Oliver ha scritto: >> Arduino is an electronics prototyping board, and also a GNU >> GPL2-licenced IDE for writing and uploading code to such boards. Fedora >> has packages for the IDE. >> >> Recent versions of the IDE include WiFi firmware for Arduino >> (http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoWiFiShield). The Arduino "source" >> bundles include the binary firmware. Source code for the firmware is >> also included, but there are no build scripts, and the firmware is not >> built when the IDE itself is built. >> >> Is it permissible to include this firmware in the Fedora packages? My >> impression is that it's not firmware in the sense described at >> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Licensing:Main#Binary_Firmware, because >> it's not firmware for hardware on which Fedora runs. Rather, I believe >> that it is content >> (https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging:Guidelines#Code_Vs_Content). >> >> Without access to the build scripts (which the GNU GPL2specifically says >> must be included), do we even have a licence to redistribute the firmware? > > The firmware is merely aggregated to the IDE, so the GNU GPLv2 doesn't > matter here. > > The firmware license is definitely not free. I don't know if you can > get an exception because it doesn't run on the CPU. The safest bet is > to ask FESCo. Definitely one for Fedora legal. Probably the easiest way to do this, but not the only way, is to file a package review request and have it block FE-LEGAL. The minimum requirement with firmwares is that it needs to be freely distributable but I suspect we do need an exception on top of that. Peter -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
