Asus EEE PC

[Luke -Jr]

On Friday 25 April 2008, Bradley Hook wrote:
> Keep in mind that ASUS is bound by contracts with the component
> manufacturers.

Keep in mind that ASUS is bound by contracts with the Linux, BusyBox, and 
other such developers to release the source WITH THE PRODUCT*. Why should we 
care about their other contracts? If the two contracts are incompatible, 
their software is illegal to distribute and they need to resolve the problems 
BEFORE they can distribute it.

> Like with the Openmoko situation, there are certain things that the hardware
> vendors cannot open source by law (stupid U.S. laws).

AFAIK, this only applies to WiFi, and only to a certain extent. While 
releasing the madwifi code might be legally risky** due to vagueness, I don't 
think it is clear-cut illegal like GPL violation is.

> The nice thing is that ASUS has made an effort to provide as much as they
> can. The power control stuff has been released, and I hear there are hacks
> to get the rest of the hardware fully functional without too much effort.

In most cases, this argument of "they released the source now" is moot, since 
all rights granted under the GPL are void once the terms are violated-- that 
is, you cannot necessarily just start complying later and automatically 
regain the right to distribute it. In this particular case, since Asus has 
opted to use the source-offer form of the GPL, they're probably clear as long 
as the code they released is in fact the code used (since the GPL does not 
specify a time deadline for delivering requested code).


* While an offer is an acceptable substitute for the source itself, the source
  offered must still be that equivlent to the binaries. It cannot be
  a "cleaned up" source or a later version.
** IIRC, the laws in question state that the product cannot be used to
   transmit on non-licensed frequencies. I would argue that third-party
   modifications to the driver source should be considered the same as if I
   were to modify this in the hardware. The FCC approval would be void, but at
   no fault of the original company.