[Arm-netbook] Allwinner git / GPL stalemate situation

[Vladimir Pantelic]

Philip Hands wrote:
> Vladimir Pantelic <vladoman at gmail.com> writes:
>
>> cnxsoft wrote:
>>> On 01/06/2012 18:03, Tsvetan Usunov, OLIMEX LTD wrote:
>>>> Olimex will be granted to access to Allwinner development git repositories
>>>> if we sign NDA which do not allow us to share the sources with 3rd parties.
>>>>
>>>> Now we are in stalemate situation if we want to develop the Linux support
>>>> for A10-A13-OLinuXino we have to use the information on these repositories
>>>> as the other documentation is incomplete, we spoted lot of errors on it (but
>>>> we have been warned that there are errors anyway) and only these sources
>>>> guarantee that we will not lose time while development, in other hand
>>>> signing this NDA will make us GPL violator as we will not be able to release
>>>> the BSP sources.
>>>>
>>>> Any ideas? We are so smallish customer that we can't influence
>>>> Allwinner/Wits on GPL at all. If we do not sign, they just do not allow us
>>>> access and we are free to go somewhere else :-)
>>>>
>>>> Tsvetan
>>> Interesting. So if i understand correctly, they ask you to sign a
>>> legally binding document asking you to do something against the law.
>>
>> it is not against the law. if you sign that NDA, you cannot release the
>> code under the GPL, thus you cannot release a product. Being able to release
>> a product is not mandated by any law...
>
> Imposing extra conditions on the distribution of a GPLed work (which I
> think a tweaked Linux kernel is very likely to be) is a violation of the
> terms of the GPL.

I understood they supply only documentation under NDA, not code, and are
stating that source code resulting from this information cannot be released.
In this case they are not violating the GPL at all and SFC can do little
about that.

Now, Olimex using that info to adapt a linux kernel and not releasing that
due to the NDA would violate the GPL. So, the only option is not to sign it.