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Nov
30
Openmoko gllin EULA
18 years ago, at the end of November | 2 Comments
Most people are now aware that the gps driver for the NEO 1973 is available once you’ve accepted the EULA, although strangely you can’t look in the docs folder to get at the GPL/LGPL notices or the readme until you’ve agreed to it. I can’t see a specific reason for this and it’s probably just a configuration error.
Aside from all the shouting at the end of the EULA, there is one sentence that did catch my eye and it was fairly early on.
“…removal of the Software from a country in which it is licensed shall automatically terminate this license.”
Notwithstanding the fact that I could pretty much guarentee that neither you or I would happen to know in which countries it is licensed in, apparently if you happen to wander into a country that is not on this list you just lost the right to use the software. I think it’s only fair to know the boundaries, can we have the list please.
Since the EULA doesn’t allow the distribution of the binary .ipk file I’m afraid that you aren’t going to see this in any non-official images either. I’m not even sure that it’s practical for the official images to contain it. What would be useful, however, is if the ‘firstboot’ scripts checked your SD card for the .ipk and automatically installed it for you. I’m fairly certain that I’ll start putting this into my images shortly.
Although it’s a binary only .ipk it is at least a step in the right direction and at least GTA01 owners can now legally use their gps.
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Tagged with: neo 1973 • openmoko • software
November 30, 2007 10:53
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Even if the license is corrected to allow use in all covered countries (rather than just one), the license is troublesome. What if you fly frequently between oh say Germany and somewhere in the far east. There’s a significant chance at some point that you’ll be on a flight that either has to re-route over or execute and emergency landing at one of the un-approved countries. A license should not have wink-wink nudge-nudge clauses.
The ironic may notice that a gps driver could easily include code that would correlate current position with country. Then it could cross the country with the country that the license was approved for and automatically enforce the license restriction. Perhaps it could be joined by a giant flashing “Don’t Worry”…
IANAL but in my understanding, in the cited phrase, “licensed” refers to the license that is being granted while you read this text and click on “Accept”. Then “country in which it is licensed” would be the country you were in while you clicked the button and then if you know what country you’re in then you also know in which country your particular copy is licensed. (And that also means that gllin doesn’t know in which country it gets licensed to someone and cannot enforce the restriction as proposed by Tom).
Now, with other computer programs you can usually buy as many copies of it as you like, each time implicitly agreeing to the EULA by opening the box or whatever. My question is can you accept the gllin EULA multiple times in different countries and have one gllin licensed for each of the countries you frequently fly between? Can they be the same copy or do you have to destroy one everytime you cross borders?
The phrase that raised my doubts was “acquired a device that includes software licensed by Openmoko” because it can probably refer to any device that has some storage, if the person from who you acquire it has stored such software on it.