gEDA-user: Clarifying the License issues for gaf and PCB

[Harry Eaton]

Steve Meier wrote:

>I think at this point, in order to avoid confussion.
>
>1) That gaf and pcb need to state if they consider the distributed
>symbols and land patterns to be code.
>  
>
I have never considered land patterns to be code. I'd be perfectly happy 
for a font-like exception being clearly stated for the outputs of pcb 
(gerber, ps, screen capture etc.) for those (few) symbols/footprints 
that I've created.

The real trouble is that the symbol libraries have been contributed by 
many different people. It will be very hard to figure out a complete 
list of who contributed what.  I think that there are very few if any 
footprint/symbol contributors who would object to such a license 
clarification, but locating them all for verification will probably be 
quite troublesome. I believe I discussed the issue with Thomas many 
years ago and he didn't think of the libraries as code either. One 
solution would be to gut the libraries and start over. That could have 
the advantage of raising the quality and reliability of the library too 
(but greatly reducing the count too).

For me personally it's never mattered because I've considered the 
libraries to be so error prone that I've always made my own footprints 
anyway.

harry