EFI-X Violates LGPL, Uses Community Code without Attribution
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 21st Sep 2009 08:44 UTC, submitted by Cytor
Hardware, Embedded Systems There are several options out there if you wan to run Mac OS X on your non-Apple labelled computer, but one of them appears to be in serious trouble. It has been uncovered that the EFI-X module is nothing more than a USB stick with a DRM chip, with code from the hackintosh community on it - without attribution. On top of that, its firmware update utility uses LGPL code - again, without attribution.
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The1stImmortal
Member since:
2005-10-20

... the GPL, unlike software licenses (baring some legally contested clauses, present in some past licenses), the GPL takes away from the offeree (the one who accepts the license terms) ownership. The particular clause we both mentioned says that changes I have made, and the copyright to which the law exclusively grants me, have to be released under the same license regardless of my wishes. That is in effect taking my exclusive ownership away from me.


That's not entirely true - I believe that you're perfectly free to release your changes, as *just* your changes (eg, patches) under whatever license you wish. It is only when you give out the intrinsically-linked combination (either binary or source) of your changes and the original code, that the GPL is forced onto your code.

The same thing applies to books - you could write something describing how a book's plot should have been, in your opinion, and do whatever you want with it. If you actually edit that book and change it to be the way you think it should have been, however, you can't publish it without the permission of the copyright holder (within the copyright period, and subject to a few other conditions)

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