Re: gEDA-user: More footprint stuff

[Walter Fetter Lages <w.fetter@xxxxxxxx>]

steve cole wrote:
> Surly the GPL IS the correct licence for the symbols / footprints.
>
> The GPL would only come into play if you decide to DISTRIBUTE your 
> schematics / PCB files, and if you were to do this then a copy of the symbol 
> and footprint files would be essential anyway.
> If your designs were to stay internal to your company there would be no need 
> to release your symbols to anyone outside.
>
> Your finished PCBs could be thought of as a printed page, you do not supply a  
> copy of your fonts and word processor if you sell a book!
>
> Steve

	OK. Symbols/footprints supplied with geda/PCB are GPL'd.

	But you can draw a geda schematics in a way that it does not embed the
symbols, just reference them. Recalling the Asimov's analogy, it is like
to reference Asimov's book chapter 4 in your own book. I think that in
this case the schematics is not subject to GPL since you could use the
schematics file with geda supplied symbols (which are GPL'd) or with any
other set of symbols provided that the symbol files have the same names
and the same connection points as symbol files supplied with geda.

	
	On the other hand, PCB allways embed the footprint in pcb file. Hence I
think that its subject to GPL. Perhaps it is good idea to change the pcb
file format in order to support reference to symbols too. Then you could
display the same .pcb file in PCB using the GPL'd library or your own
library.

	I consider this situation (the reference case) similar to calling
printf() in your source code. glibc is GPL'd and implments a printf(),
but that does not mean that your source code is subject to GPL. Also,
nobody can claim that your source code was intented to be linked with
glibc. You could link your program against any other library that
implements printf().



--
[ ]'s
Walter Fetter Lages       <mailto:w.fetter@xxxxxxxx>
<http://www.eletro.ufrgs.br/~fetter>