[Arm-netbook] A13 schematic

[Henrik Nordström]

mån 2012-04-30 klockan 09:12 +0200 skrev Alejandro Mery:

> 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.

He can't use that SoC vendor as the software he have is unlicensed
without any rights to redistribute. Further the SoC manufacturer have
lost their GPLv2 rights and technically need to seek out each and every
copyright holder to agree to restore their rights to distribute the
linux kernel.

In practice they don't need to seek out each and every copyright holder,
but is so they ethernally risk copyright holders take action for past
infringements. How a court would react to such case is unknown.

> 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?

Well.. I'll split that in two.

Shipping devices with included software is distribution and requires the
vendor to comply with the GPL licensing terms, which among other things
means providing source according to the terms of the GPL license
(bundled, or written offer).

But you as a end-user have very little right to "demand" source. You can
ask for it from your sales/technical support contact, and if they refuse
you can ask a copyright owner to take action.

You can file a sales transaction dispute on the grounds that the
included software is unlicenced software distribution (i.e. pirated).
But this is unlikely to result in anything positive when we talk about
ebay/aliexpress/etc sales, an ineffective in general on small
transactions.

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

As above, with the added twist that here the manufacturer may have a
direct GPL distribution transaction with you if you (or your device)
download software from the manufacturer.

Regards
Henrik