GPL and NDA

[Justin Cormack]

On Tue, 2003-04-01 at 02:25, Ronald G Minnich wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 hcyun at etri.re.kr wrote:
> 
> > I have documents for a specific chipset which I get  with NDA. 
> > And I'm trying to port Linuxbios on that chipset. 
> > As LinuxBIOS is GPL, I know I must make my port publicly available. 
> > In this case, Is it a violation of NDA or not? Does it depend on NDA? 
> 
> - you can build GPL code based on NDA chipsets, but you MUST get the 
>   permission to do that from the holder of the GPL

er, typo, holder of specification

> - it is a violation of the NDA if you release GPL code without
>   getting permission
> - you do not have to release your GPL code if you never release your
>   linuxbios to anyone outside ETRI. You only have to release code
>   if you release object
> - If I were you I would consider using a different chipset if you can not
>   get the vendor to agree.

Or if you never want to do business with them again, just ignore the
NDA. They have no legal force in some countries (eg the UK).

But I would avaoid them if at all possible. There are always other
manufacturers, and no one else will be able to help you with
development.

Justin