Re: gEDA-user: firmware and the GPL license

["Samuel A. Falvo II" <sam.falvo@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 15, 2007 8:34 AM, Randall Nortman <geda-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> available to the user in this case?  Even in the case of BSD-type
> licenses that require credit to be given "in the documentation
> accompanying the software", what documentation?  Sure, you could stick

1) BSD license does not any longer require this stipulation.  See
http://www.opensource.org for the license verbiage.

2) In the user's manual:

"This product uses or licenses components manufactured by the
following parties: ..."

What is so confusing about this?  This kind of text appears in plenty
of documentation for plenty of products already, in some form or
another.

> it in the manual for the appliance, but that would be confusing to the
> average consumer.  What if the embedded device is truly embedded in

Nobody ever sees (2) above because nobody ever reads the users manual
anymore.  The average consumer especially.

> to this sort of thing.  So instead everybody reinvents the wheel, and
> as a result more bugs creep into your refrigerator.  (And the

Even with pure public domain software, people are going to re-invent
the wheel.  An example I've written on another mailing list is that,
in today's industry, we have MILLIONS of kinds of wheels.  A Toyota
Prius wheel will not fit a shopping cart, and a wooden wagon wheel
doesn't do so hot as conveyer-belt rollers.  The IDEA is what is open;
the physical manifestation of the said idea is as domain-specific as
the domain to which it is applied.

This is as true in software as it is in the physical world.  If you
_religiously_ re-use software, you end up with horridly unmaintainable
source, and massively fat binaries.  Our OSes take gigabytes of space
precisely because they're so dang general-purpose that they not only
include the kitchen sink, but serve as both floor wax AND a desert
topping too.  This would never fly on an embedded device.

-- 
Samuel A. Falvo II


_______________________________________________
geda-user mailing list
geda-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user