[Arm-netbook] A13 schematic

[lkcl luke]

On Mon, Apr 30, 2012 at 8:12 AM, Alejandro Mery <amery at geeks.cl> wrote:

> I'm "sightly" more puzzled now. so grounding the answer to three cases.
> 1) let's say you are a board manufacturer called... Tsvetan who wants
> to distribute not only binaries but sources to his customers but the
> SoC manufacturer only gives him binary images of the GPLv2 code unless
> he buys a large amount of chips. Can he "demand" to get the exact
> sources behind that binary anyway.

 yes.  if they do not comply, begin GPL violation negotiations.

> 2) you buy a branded device, let's say an Ainol Tablet, which comes
> with binaries of GPLv2 code, can you "demand" the manufacturer and the
> soc manufacturers to give you the exact sources behind that binary?

 no.  you *have* to go to the person that you bought it from.  they
have to go to the person that *they* bought it from.  they then have
to go the person that THEY bought it from.  repeat, repeat, repeat,
repeat, repeat, repeat.

 if however as henrik mentions there happens to be one of these
"written offers" in the box then of course you can contact the people
on the "written offer" but i am not entirely certain if the "chain"
above applies in that case.

> 3) if not, what if the manufacturer makes a firmware upgrade available
> for downloading (either manual or automatic, OTA), can we now?

 if it is binary and the binary was made from GPL source code then no
- it makes absolutely no difference how the GPL source code ended up
being used: firmware, OTA, absolute zero relevance.

 overall it is just generally easier for everyone if someone in the
"chain" releases the source code publicly.

 l.