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Subject: 
RE: legOS
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Mon, 30 Nov 1998 23:54:24 GMT
Original-From: 
Eric Hodges <eric.hodges@platinum.comNOSPAM>
Viewed: 
2284 times
  
Regardless, all software written by Lego is their property.  If you want to
redistribute it you must obtain permission.  If you want to modify it for
your own personal use I don't think there is anything they can do to you.
Even if the licensing agreement excludes the software that comes in the
RCX's ROM it is still subject to copyright law.

What's the real issue here?  What are we afraid Lego will do?

-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Stormont [SMTP:brian@projo.com]
Sent: Monday, November 30, 1998 1:37 PM
To: lego
Subject: Re: legOS


Assuming firmware is "software", the question still remains whether the
licensing agreement that came with the Mindstorms kit refers to only the
PC-based software (which was my interpretation when I read it) or whether
it
refers to the firmware too.  From my reading of the agreement, I don't
think it
is obvious that it also covers the firmware.

In any case, there still is nothing legally preventing someone from
replacing
their firmware with another version of firmware. The licensing agreement
only
dealt with copying and reverse-engineering the software Lego provided.  As
for
what "software" that is, the lawyers will have to argue...

-brian

Eric Hodges wrote:

It's the law.  Software isn't defined by the media it's stored in or the
way it is stored.  It doesn't make any legal difference if you distribute
the software on a CD or printed on the back of a T-shirt.  The copyright
laws consider software to be any "set of statements or instructions to be
used directly or indirectly in a computer in order to bring about a • certain
result."( 17 U.S.C ? 101)  Software distributed on ROM, EPROM, EEPROM, • etc.
is still covered by the copyright laws.

-----Original Message-----
From:   Kekoa Proudfoot [SMTP:lugnet.robotics@lugnet.com]
Sent:   Monday, November 30, 1998 11:26 AM
To:     lego-robotics@crynwr.com
Subject:        Re: legOS

Eric Hodges <lego-robotics@crynwr.com> wrote:
Firmware is software.  It doesn't matter if you burn software into ROM,
store it on EPROM, store it as PAL settings, core memory values, etc.
Software is software, and firmware is software.

Is this your opinion?  Or do you have something to back this with?

-Kekoa



Message has 1 Reply:
  RE: legOS
 
(...) I don't think TLG has much to gain by trying to stop replacement software/firmware for RCX. However it seems much more likely that they would try to prevent the use of the name "lego" in legOS. I used to work for a company that had a very (...) (26 years ago, 30-Nov-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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