Huawei HG659b GPL responsibilities?

MatthewB:

Ok thanks.

I'll see what I can get from Huawei, and if they refuse try Spark again.

If I do manage to get anything, will I get sued for posting a download link here?

Thanks,

Matthew

Short answer:

TL;DR: No, you won't.

Longer Answer:

Assuming GNU GPLv2...

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed under the terms of this General Public License. The "Program", below, refers to any such program or work, and a "work based on the Program" means either the Program or any derivative work under copyright law: that is to say, a work containing the Program or a portion of it, either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into another language. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation in the term "modification".) Each licensee is addressed as "you".

Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, and the output from the Program is covered only if its contents constitute a work based on the Program (independent of having been made by running the Program). Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.

1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty; keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along with the Program.

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

<snip>

These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.

Emphasis my own. The relevant section is section 1. The GPL also says...

<snip> if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.

In effect, you have the same rights as Huawei themselves do. Spark's own firmware would be covered under the GPL also as Spark's work is derived from Huawei's, and thus must also be released under the same GPL license as Huawei's work is. If Spark doesn't, they are in violation of the GPL. They may not modify the license in any way (although they may use a higher GPL version, i.e. 3 if they so choose), but the GPL does not permit changes of license for derivative works (see section 2 clause b)

Because of this, you cannot be held liable for releasing any GPL-licensed source code.

As a side note, I'm not a lawyer, just a programmer, however this is how I interpret the GPL license. If I'm wrong in my interpretation, please feel free to correct me.

MatthewB

michaelmurfy

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MatthewB

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MatthewB

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