[ On Friday, August 23, 2002 at 10:41:06 (+0200), Martin Husemann wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: Where to put firmware?
>
> Another nit: I'd expect several firmwares to come with a "redistribute 
> unmodified copys only" license. How do you deal with that? Force the user
> to convert them into a LKM-able format themselfes?

A wrapper of new file headers around a file will not modify the content
of the file and thus will not violate a _copyright_ license.

In most jurisdictions even a translation from one representation to
another will not likely violate a copyright license either (eg. uuencode
to base64 or whatever).  I'd bet you could even get away with flipping
the order of the bytes (on machine word sized chunks or even in the
whole file) since after all the rights protected by copyright are not
violated -- the ultimate meaning and expression of the work is still
preserved since you're inherently including all the information
necessary to transform it back into the exact same form the copyright
owner intended it to be in (otherwise it wouldn't run in the device in
question now would it! ;-).

Copyright law is likely the only protection something that's _freely_
_re-_distributable will have.  (well other than IP laws not directly
related to the right to copy, such as patents, I suppose)

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <g.a.woods@ieee.org>;           <woods@robohack.ca>
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