Hello All,
Thanks for your response. Yes I am aware of GPL and I would assume the commerical Linux BIOS distribution would submit the code back to the repo for any fixes/enhancements.
Regards, Phani
On Jan 14, 2008 7:48 PM, Peter Stuge peter@stuge.se wrote:
Hi!
On Mon, Jan 14, 2008 at 09:26:27PM -0500, Ward Vandewege wrote:
On Tue, Jan 15, 2008 at 02:58:07AM +0100, Peter Stuge wrote:
Note that it's not really legally possible to sell you a firmware based on coreboot
That's not correct. It's perfectly possible and allowed. It's just that the source also needs be provided (as per the requirements of the GPL), and that nobody can stop you - the customer - from redistributing that source code under the GPL.
Thanks for the correction!
So what Peter is saying here, I think, is that it is difficult to charge for software under the GPL because your price point can be undercut quite easily.
Well, no, but that is a good point.
I should have been more clear - what I tried (but failed) to explain is that it's not possible to sell a coreboot firmware under any terms like those that traditional BIOS vendors use since their source code uses a different license.
I also meant to say that the practical way to "purchase" a coreboot firmware is to hire someone to write the neccessary code, and that code will most likely automatically be GPL and so it should be contributed back into the project repository - meaning that the paying customer will not get much exclusive in the purchase, except of course bragging rights and whatever customization benefits that come from running coreboot on the particular hardware platform.
- since coreboot is GPL you are always entitled
to receive the source code free of charge.
That is actually not 100% correct - see section 6 of the GPL
Again - thanks for correcting! I only think online distribution and shall go and sleep now. :)
//Peter
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