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Claudio L. · 11-17-2021, 09:22 PM

(11-13-2021 12:12 AM)3298 Wrote: - I can provide a package for Arch Linux relatively easily, but that opens the door to people asking for Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, BSD, MacOS, etc. packages which range from much harder to impossible with what I have. Not providing any is at least consistent.
- x49gp is derived from a modified ancient QEMU which is licensed under GPL, which means x49gp has to be GPL-licensed (or compatible) as well. It's not quite there, unfortunately. The most important part of GPL compliance is providing the source of course, which is trivial if the source is the only form it's distributed in ... but we should be declaring explicitly which license x49gp uses (which isn't as easy as it sounds, because not all contributors can be contacted anymore to ask whether they are okay with a particular license), and we shouldn't be bundling source-less calculator firmware with it. Aside from enforcing compliance with the GPL requirement for providing sources on request, avoiding binary distribution somewhat mitigates these legal headaches by helping keep a low profile.

I think there's no doubt the license of x49gp cannot be anything other than GPL because of being a derivative work of QEMU.
All contributors knew this when they worked on the project, so I don't see why you would need to contact them one by one. Everybody knows that contributing to a GPL project means their contribution will be released under the GPL.

Source code is available in multiple places, all you'd need to do is perhaps add a URL to any of the github repos to comply with the GPL. I don't think the license requires you to include the sources in the distribution, but for you to make the source code available, which is a different thing. Pointing to a github repository should suffice (I think, I'm not a lawyer). Otherwise all Linux packages would have to be distributed with full sources. Instead, the package tells you where the sources that were used for the build are located, and you are on your own after that.

(11-13-2021 12:12 AM)3298 Wrote: - Speaking about bundling firmware, while some of my changes published in this thread (and subsequently committed into Claudio's repository) were aimed at eliminating the firmware from x49gp to insulate against license issues, there's still the bootcode left. At least those changes moving the firmware choice from the build process to a first-launch setup was a step in the right direction, because that means a user could just pick the newRPL firmware and get a usable emulator without HP firmware other than bootcode. Still, by bundling the bootcode (and firmware in the repository - mostly for convenience now, after those changes) HP could pound on its copyright on that data. Our only defense would be that strictly speaking they should have been aware of x49gp for a long time via HP employee Tim Wessman's past contributions, and still have not objected, thereby silently permitting us to keep distributing them. Keeping a low profile helps there too.

As far as the binaries... they should be removed from the repository. Then perhaps create a script that would download the formal HP ROM zip files from hpcalc.org, extract the actual rom files and cleanup.
That leaves only the boot code... that should be moved away to some obscure repository. Maybe not obscure, perhaps a .zip file uploaded to hpcalc.org with the boot code for all supported calcs, then the user can go and download it by hand (or a script provided that does it during install). I believe hpcalc.org has authorization to host binary files copyrighted by HP, so no issue there.