[Gta04-owner] GTA04A3 System Manual

[Neil Jerram]

On Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:23:31 +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> Good question. The final CE measurements are scheduled for the next
> weeks and most likely are done on a A3 unit.

That's nice to know, thanks.

>> My other overall thought about the manual was concerning the "NC" 
>> part of the license.  I have a feeling the list might have discussed 
>> this before - in which case apologies for not checking that first - 
>> and I don't have much standing to ask you to contribute more to the 
>> world than you already have; however you may like to consider:
>>
>> 1. Would you have been able to do the work that you've done on 
>> GTA04, if the license for Openmoko's documentation had had a 
>> non-commercial restriction?
>
> Yes. The only task would have been to ask Sean for permission, before
> copying any material. We could have
> still *used* the material by reading it. Like you can buy a
> (copyrighted) text book about embedded systems
> and design your own. Anyways, we have not even copied anything from
> the GTA01/02 material
> (except that we redistribute the CAD files from our server)...
>
>> 2. Is the "NC" an important part of protection against competition 
>> for you?  Even by using all the docs, I really doubt if any other 
>> organization could ramp up to your level of expertise quickly enough 
>> to compete with your GTA04 business.
>
> Well, the license only covers the PDF *document* as it is. Not the
> hardware nor software nor
> concepts nor ideas. That is the area of patents and not copyright.
> Therefore it is simply not
> covered by such licenses. The Free&Open-Hardware community is heavily
> working on
> defining something similar to GPL for hardware - but it is not 
> simple.
>
> So in my interpretation, the NC clause only restricts that someone
> prints 1000 of these documents
> and asks for money. Or copies some pages verbatim into a book. But
> he/she can always ask for
> permission and we do not plan to use it restrictively.
>
> And it prohibits that this document is listed on some strange web
> sites where people ask money
> for a link to download a copy with their logo added as a watermark...

Thanks for those answers.  I feel happy with your position now, because 
I see that the domain is more restricted than I first thought, and also 
I see your point about pay websites, and other uses that might just copy 
without adding any value at all.

One tiny remaining concern, though: what happens if (heaven forbid) 
Golden Delicious ceases to be, and so there is no one to ask for extra 
permissions?

>> 3. Just in case someone could ramp up and do something similar to 
>> GTA04, could that in fact be better for both you (goldelico) and us 
>> (the community)?
>>
>> (I like Nina Paley's blog about this (general) question, at 
>> http://blog.ninapaley.com/2010/08/31/four-freedoms-of-free-culture/.)
>
> Inspiring points of view!
>
> But it does not give any arguments about the NC clause. For the ND
> clause I agree,
> that it limits freedom (of individuals i.e. users/owners).

Yes, sorry, she only mentions NC in passing, doesn't she?  I remember 
that I liked her point of view, but forgot to check in detail what she 
covered!

> My general idea about "free" is "free as in free speech, not free
> beer". And it is about
> giving freedom to owners/users.

Agreed.

> Not freedom to the Fortune 1000. They
> (or their managers)
> already have more than any individual.

I'm not sure here though.  I'm not sure I know who will be in Fortune 
1000 in the future.  Trying to draw distinctions on this kind of basis 
does not feel like a reliable thing to do.

Also the Linux kernel has benefitted from contributions from IBM, I 
believe...

> Thanks for pointing this out,

Thanks for your answers, again.

          Neil