OPENCORES.ORG

Giacomo Bernardi wrote on Sun, 9 Jan 2005 12:02:50 +0000

i learn a lot but how could explain that a patent could be a solution ? 
Patent cost money !
nicO
Le dimanche 9 Janvier 2005 17:30, Jecel Assumpcao Jr a écrit :
> Giacomo Bernardi wrote on Sun, 9 Jan 2005 12:02:50 +0000
>
> > I can't understand very well why the hardware would require a different
> > license from software.
>
> Most people here don't seem to understand this, which is why this
> discussion isn't going anywhere until we step back and agree on the
> basic terms and issues. Note that I am not a lawyer and what follows is
> all from memory, so I will eagerly await corrections.
>
> [Copyright]
>
> Originally only for books, over the years the set of laws that govern
> copyrights has been extended as required by the evolving reality. An
> interesting example for us was when it was decided that player piano
> rolls were copyrightable even though they were meant to be read by a
> machine instead of a person.
>
> Though it is easy to forget today, software wasn't automatically assumed
> to be protected by copyright. In Brazil, for an example of a Berne
> convention country (an international treaty that tried to keep local
> laws in sync), a special law had to be passed in late 1987 to extend
> copyright to software. Before that what we call "piracy" was perfectly
> legal. I don't remember when the law was extended in the US, but it was
> probably in the 1960s or 70s. The US also started to allow software to
> be patented around 1981 or so, but that is another story.
>
> Another interesting extension from the early 1980s which is interesting
> for us was then the US and Japan agreed to allow integrated circuit mask
> artwork to be copyrighted. We will get back to this later.
>
> [Public domain, Licenses]
>
> It is very, very important for us to understand what exactly GPL or BSD
> style licenses do for us and how they contrast with the End User License
> Agreements (EULAs) that the commercial software producers normally use.
>
> First copyright laws again: what they say is that only the copyright
> holder (normally the original creator or someone who hired him) can
> create copies of the material. I can't and you can't. It is a crime for
> us to do so. But the law also says that the copyright holder can extend
> that right to any person he chooses under any conditions he wants. The
> best way to do that is to make use a a separate set of laws: the
> contract laws. He can have a contract with three of his friends and now
> they can also make copies of the material and it isn't a crime for them
> to do so.
>
> Now this situation doesn't last (or shouldn't, at least) forever. After
> some time the material is declared to belong to the "public domain" and
> anybody at all can copy it. What if you want to allow everybody to copy
> your material before that time is up? You can explictly put that
> material in the public domain any time you want. The problem with this
> is that somebody can get a copy of the material and then decide to sue
> you for some damage they feel this might have caused them. If the
> material had naturally become part of the public domain you would be
> long dead by this time and wouldn't have to worry about this, but by
> doing it early it could be a problem.
>
> So an alternative is to create a contract with everybody. Of course you
> don't want to go into every place in the world and sign a paper with
> every person, but it is possible to draft the contract so that a judge
> will be satisfied that both parties agreed to it even if they have never
> actually met. Let's look at the GPL license, for example (though in this
> particular discussion the BSD is exactly the same). Some random person
> who has a program in his computer can't share it with me - it is illegal
> for him to copy it. But there is some text on his machine which is a
> contract with the original author. We can assume that the author agreed
> to it and if my friend also agrees to it then he can give me a copy
> legally. How does he prove that he agreed with it? The very act of
> distributing a copy is defined in the contract itself as proof of
> acceptance.
>
> Note that I, the receiver of the copy, don't have to agree with the GPL.
> It also doesn't say anything about what I can do with the program. Only
> if I want to distribute the program myself, which the copyright law
> forbids, do I have to look at the GPL and decide to accept it. It
> doesn't take anything away from me (a common misconception) but instead
> adds stuff that I normally wouldn't have. One of the things me and my
> friend have agreed to is that the original author is not responsible for
> any damages we might have as a result of using the program. Note that we
> can still sue the author (nothing can prevent that, which is another
> common misconception) but now it is less likely we will win and it would
> probably be easier and less costly for the author. So there is *some*
> protection in that. Of course, *before* I agreed with the GPL to
> distribute the program I already was using it and had not yet agreed to
> not hold the author responsible for damages. In practice this is not
> likely to make any difference.
>
> The EULAs are also contracts. They are also known as "shrink wrap"
> agreements since they usually have a term that says that the proof that
> you agreed to the contract was the removal of the shrink wrap around the
> box which the software came in. Unlike the previous example, it is the
> person receiving the program that is bound to the contract, not the
> person copying it (which is not the store in any case but the original
> factory) so the copyright laws don't apply at all. This contract does
> not grant you any rights that the law doesn't already give you, but in
> fact takes some away. There is some debate about whether it can do that,
> but we will just assume it can. So normally I have the right to measure
> how fast the program is while running it and then write a magazine
> article about what I found. The contract might forbid me to do that. It
> might not allow me to use the program for some purpose or other or it
> might require that I only use the program while upside down!
>
> There reason why I have gone into all this in such detail is because
> some people seem to want things from the license that an EULA will give
> them while writing it in a Open Source License style. That won't work.
>
> [different forms]
>
> What is this "material" I have been talking about so far? Whatever the
> original author typed in is obviously one example. But if someone
> modifies it in some way then we will have a "derived work" related to
> the material and subject to all kinds of rules we won't go into here. A
> more interesting modification for us is when some mechanical translation
> process is applied. Like if we use the Unix program "sed" to replace all
> variables named "jxk4" with "khg", for example. To a judge that would
> look like a slightly different form of the *same* work. Any teacher
> would say the same thing as well. A little less obvious is the case when
> the original was a C program and we translated it automatically to
> Pascal or to x86 machine language, but I think we can all agree that it
> is still the same program and so any copyright restrictions should
> continue to apply.
>
> Now imagine that the "material" is a picture I have drawn. This picture
> happens to be the schematic for some circuit I invented but that doesn't
> really matter in terms of copyright. Nobody in the world can make copies
> of that drawing except for me. If we translate it into a different form
> (a text with the netlist, for example) that restriction should still
> apply. The interesting thing is what happens if I give this drawing (in
> whatever form) to five people. Copyright law keeps them from giving it
> to other people in turn, but imagine one person builds the circuit
> described by the drawing and then sells it to someone else. Is that
> circuit just another form of the drawing? THIS IS IMPORTANT! Some of us
> are tempted to answer yes, but my experience tells me that many people
> (including any judges we are likely to meet) will answer no. Richard
> Stallman thinks the answer is no, which is the reason he has said the
> stuff he said about free hardware on this very list.
>
> So controlling how people copy the material we produce will not be
> enough for some of us. Commercial use of our cores is not copying but
> *using* them. I will agree that the case of bitstream files for FPGAs is
> fuzzy, but for ASICs I hope we can all agree on this.
>
> The reason why the IC mask artwork copyright extension worked was that
> you can't make the chip without the mask and you can't get a copy of the
> mask unless the author gives it to you. Taking a picture of the chip to
> generate a mask is still illegal. But if I have some board and then I
> draw a schematic from it after probing it with a multimeter, I will not
> have a copy of the schematic that was used to create it. It will be a
> different drawing. Even if 100% equivalent, it was not mechanically
> dirived from the original.
>
> The bottom line: the difference between hardware and software is that
> for software we can control just copying and let people use it however
> they want if we don't want to be as nasty as commercial software. But
> for hardware redistribution is using our material and not copying it, so
> if we want more control then we need to be more EULA style.
>
> Note that even an EULA contract with restrictions might not have as much
> "teeth" as an Open Source license since it is easier to get a jury to
> agree with you when granting new things than when trying to forbid. So
> one solution is to have one or more patents associated with your design.
> Now patent law will be forbidding the person who got your material from
> building stuff with it and you can write a contract that will allows
> this under your terms.
>
> I hope that helps,
> -- Jecel
> _______________________________________________
> http://www.opencores.org/mailman/listinfo/cores