[Arm-netbook] [libreplanet-discuss] EOMA68 and freedom in digital technology

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68


On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 1:16 PM, Elena ``of Valhalla''
<valhalla-l at trueelena.org> wrote:
> On 2016-09-10 at 20:38:34 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> you're also aware that with the sole exception of
>> the olimex laptop's PCBs the only thing that they provide is
>> auto-generated PDFs *from* the schematics source code... not the
>> actual schematics and certainly not the PCB design files?
>
> That's false: for the boards marked with the OSHW logo (which include
> the olinuxino boards and a number of microcontroller based ones, but not
> the SOM ones) schematics are provided, either as a zip file in the
> product page or in a github repository:

oh good!  looks like i was wrong.  huh, how about that.  thank you for
pointing that out, elena - really appreciated.

> It is true that most of those schematics are in Eagle format, and thus
> can't be opened with Free Software (which is the reason I didn't
> actually open them), and they are only moving on to using Kicad for the
> later boards, but that's definitely not the same as not providing
> schematics at all.

 very true.

>
>> [...]
>>  you're aware that olimex operates as a criminal cartel, from shipping
>> GPL-violating A10 bootloaders and kernels provided by Allwinner, back
>> around 2011/2012?
>> [...]
>> now, whilst tsevtan is making money selling you hardware that requires
>> non-free components to operate basic functions, i've put my foot down
>> and said NO, i will NOT sell GPL-violating product.
>
> While it's true that you are not violating the GPL yourself
> (thankfully!) by not using Allwinner-provided code, if (and that's a
> HUGE if) violating a civil law (copyright) turns a company into a
> criminal cartel then you are working with a criminal cartel yourself,
> since Allwinner is still violating the GPL with their new processors.

 ok - it doesn't work that way.  it's to do with the GPL license.  if
i was to distribute allwinner's original GPL-violating binaries, and
received a request for the source code, and did not supply it (because
i couldn't), *then* i would also be criminally-infringing copyright
law if i did not cease and desist from distribution of the product.

 however, i haven't *done* that, elena.  i waited until the full
source code (reverse-engineered or just simply made available by
allwinner... in some cases years later) was available.

 l.