Re: Fedora Freedom and linux-libre

[jeff <moe blagblagblag org>]

Les Mikesell wrote:
> Whatever mechanical translations you can do to something will not change 
> its copyright status.  If you make a tar file containing 2 different 
> copyrighted works, they are still 2 separate works, but there is nothing 
> magic about tar's format that relates to this concept.

But what is the copyright status of drivers/net/tg3.c?  What lines are GPL (if 
they are) and which lines are not GPL? I don't mean this as a theoretical 
exercise, I mean this *literally*. If you read tg3.c it *ONLY* says:

/*
 * tg3.c: Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet driver.
 *
 * Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 David S. Miller (davem redhat com)
 * Copyright (C) 2001, 2002, 2003 Jeff Garzik (jgarzik pobox com)
 * Copyright (C) 2004 Sun Microsystems Inc.
 * Copyright (C) 2005-2007 Broadcom Corporation.
 *
 * Firmware is:
 *      Derived from proprietary unpublished source code,
 *      Copyright (C) 2000-2003 Broadcom Corporation.
 *
 *      Permission is hereby granted for the distribution of this firmware
 *      data in hexadecimal or equivalent format, provided this copyright
 *      notice is accompanying it.
 */


It never mentions GPL *EXCEPT* here:

MODULE_AUTHOR("David S. Miller (davem redhat com) and Jeff Garzik 
(jgarzik pobox com)");
MODULE_DESCRIPTION("Broadcom Tigon3 ethernet driver");
MODULE_LICENSE("GPL");


But tg3.o as distributed by RedHat/Fedora when it's compiled is *NOT* a GPL .o, 
it has the proprietary data in it. It isn't separate at all (like some 
firmware, say intel wireless, which is a completely separate file).

I look at tg3.c and I can't tell where this "aggregation" begins and ends. It's 
the *SAME FILE*. Can you clearly say which line numbers are GPL and which line 
numbers are not GPL?

Thanks,

-Jeff