Re: My new fancy font for framebuffer

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Tue Mar 24 2009 - 19:15:30 EST


Baybal Ni wrote:

So, why not just to squeeze the whole kbd into the kernel? =D, or you
want the way how to inject bdf blob compiletime? These way it would
violate the GPL almost the same way as you have already said.


No, it wouldn't. The fundamental requirement of the GPL is distribution of the preferred editable format, which in this case is the BDF (and the unicode files.)

Why you are so unhappy about GPL in GPL? I Think that it is perfectly
ok as long as it goes along with 4 basics of GPL. And it does along
with it.

It has nothing to do with "4 basics", it has to do with the literal specification in the license. ssencessence There is nothing wrong with incorporating code from another GPL'd project (quite on the contrary, it's encouraged), but it has to be in source code form -- a C file which contains a processed binary is not source.

Of course, you could contact the author and get a special exception, too (in which case this should be declared in the file.)

-hpa

(I am not a lawyer. My understanding is that in the United States, none of this really applies because bitmap fonts are not copyrightable. However, my understanding is that this is not true in some other jurisdictions, so we can't just go ahead and ignore the license.)
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/