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cc-licenses - Re: What happens to the GPL in FPGA & VLSI implementations?

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Subject: Development of Creative Commons licenses

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  • From: Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>
  • To: Discussion on the Creative Commons license drafts <cc-licenses AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: What happens to the GPL in FPGA & VLSI implementations?
  • Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 15:51:52 +0000

On 19 Mar 2005, at 14:18, drew Roberts wrote:

I think I know all of this, even though I am in many ways ignorant. The
question that I was trying to have answered (I hope this is it, even I am
getting confused now) is what is the difference between a high level design
translated into ROM and one translated into an asic. The postulation that was
after all was said and done, both were pieces of non-changeable silicon. Why
should one be considered a copyrighted derivative of the original "source"
that was used to produce it and one a non-copyrighted functional devicer
"cake" baked from the original "source" "the recipe" that was used to produce
it?

I'm still not a lawyer. :-)

Traditionally there's been a line drawn between copyrightable work and functional industrial design. This is another of those things in copyright that is just how it's done for historical reasons. If I had to try to explain it, I'd say that copyrightable works have to be understandably symbolic or encoded in some way. They have to have a message, not do something. Information, not functionality.

Now, I'd argue that the chip is a photographic reproduction of a design derived from the original textual description.

But certainly US law doesn't seem to be on my side, as the functional nature of the chip design seems to trump its copyrightability. Which is weird. So Greg's cookies look like the more appropriate model. Mea culpa.

On the copyrightability of circuits (but are chips circuits?):

http://www.cni.org/Hforums/cni-copyright/1996-02/0251.html

Possibly someone could page RMS on this, he's tackled it before on various lists but I can't find a definitively useful article for ASICs/FPGAs anywhere.

Here he is on "free hardware" in 1999:

http://features.linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06-22-005-05- NW-LF

He clarifies that article on this list:

http://opencollector.org/hardlicense/maillist.html

- Rob.





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