Re: changes made/thanks (re hardware designs)

["Adam 'WeirdArms' Wiggins" <awiggins@cse.unsw.edu.au>]

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Richard Stallman wrote:

>     Your recent reply to the openip group's license seems to suggest you may
>     have dropped the 'may do some good' aspect of your views;
> 
> If that is what it suggests to you, You must have completely
> misunderstood what I wrote.  Here is what I wrote:
> 
>     >This draft license has a fundamental problem, in that it tries to
>     >cover activities that copyright does not apply to: building hardware
>     >from a schematic.  Copyright does not apply to circuits.
> 
> As you see, I did not say ANYTHING about whether copylefting HDL
> designs or printed circuit layouts is good or bad.  I said that
> copyright does not apply to circuits.  I was not talking about HDL
> designs or printed circuit layouts.  Those are not the same as
> circuits--not legally, anyway.

	So we can't force derivative work that crosses over design spaces
(ie going a PCB derived from a schematic or silicon derived from an HDL
spec) is this right? This is not that much of a problem, typically the
laregest effort (at least in my experience) is with the routing of the PCB
(or the layout of the silicon). Adoption of the design is only support of
it, and if we do the hard work too (ie the PCB etc) then a free
implimentation is avaliable too if someone else closes their
implimentation.
	
> 
> If you do not think very precisely about these issues,
> you will misunderstand everything.  And if you criticize
> me based on the misunderstanding, you will be doing me
> a severe injustice.
> 
	I think your misunderstanding here is your not thinking the way we
are. I doubt graham is criticizing you, so much as criticizing your
stance. This is because most of your effort in your posts is informing us
about what we can't do rather then helping us work on what we CAN do. 

	The whole formalisation of the free hardware design licences are
not so much to formalise a legal document (we clearly can't do that and
this is generally acepted) as to formalise our goals! Even if its a legal
farse it may deter most from atempting to violate it. I've heard many
argue that the GPL might not be legally sound but so far it has not been
challenged (to my knowledge) and even if someone seems to be violating it
the free software and much of the general computing community at large
cries out in rage. Its philosophy and support is what we are aimming at.

	So why not shift your focus from a defensive stance to one of "how
can I help this group clarify and achieve their goals?", you might not be
able to help directly but might no who/what can.

	So lets get back to business :)

	Cheers Adam