sv_addr.agh non-free?

[Sam Geeraerts]

Hans-Peter Nilsson schreef:
>> From: Alexandre Oliva <lxoliva at fsfla.org>
>> Date: Tue, 08 Dec 2009 21:28:54 -0200
> 
> Hi Alexandre!
> 
>> On Dec  7, 2009, Sam Geeraerts <samgee at elmundolibre.be> wrote:
>>
>>> The gNewSense dev team have been reviewing some bug reports recently, 
>>> and submitting them upstream. There's a bug report of a file in Linux 
>>> (sv_addr.agh). It looks like a C header file and the comment says it was 
>>> generated from another file. Because the original file is not in Linux' 
>>> source we suspect this to be a GPL violation [1], so we removed it.
>>> As far as I can see linux-libre doesn't remove the file. If so, can you 
>>> explain why that is the case?
>>> [1] http://bugs.gnewsense.org/Bugs/00323
>> Let's say I'd consider it believable if someone told me modifying that
>> .agh header file would be just as convenient as modifying the .rd file,
>> and the reason for the comment was solely to avoid divergence during
>> development of the hardware or somesuch.
> 
> Exactly.  The .rd-file in question defines the addresses and
> fields of I/O ports and is used to generate both the C header
> file as well as information in the hardware description language
> of choice.  If I now had the need, say, to fix some preprocessor
> issue in that file, I'd probably *not* try and find that
> original .rd-file and regenerate, but just edit the .agh-file.

Thanks both for your thoughts about this. It seems we were a bit too 
eager to remove it.

>> If this is so, it would be one of multiple most convenient forms for
>> making changes to the program, and thus qualify as source code.
>>
>>
>> That said, it might be more desirable to have the original file and
>> whatever programs are needed to modify it and extract the information
>> from it.
>>
>> Maybe Hans Peter Nilsson (Cc:ed), my GCC and binutils colleague, could
>> shed some light on this issue?  Hans, you think there's any chance Axis
>> could contribute to Linux the files and programs mentioned in that
>> headed file?  Namely:
>>
>> /*
>> * This file was automatically generated by /n/asic/bin/reg_macro_gen
>> * from the file `/n/asic/projects/etrax_ng/doc/work/etrax_ng_regs.rd'.
>> * Editing within this file is thus not recommended,
>> * make the changes in `/n/asic/projects/etrax_ng/doc/work/etrax_ng_regs.rd' instead.
>> */
> 
> I'll ask internally, but as you might guess there's little
> practical point -- you can't change the silicon anyway.
> 
> It seems likely to me, that there's already precedent on
> hardware description headers that are generated as part of the
> silicon development process.  Is there some URL I can pass along?

Linux devs will probably see it the same way you do and not care about 
the original files/tools. But if it's not too much trouble for you, go 
for it.