[Replicant] Asking TI to release their abandonware under a free license

[Mychaela Falconia]

Update: I was able to work out an agreement with Josh off-list whereby
we are going to work together on composing a petition to TI asking
them to consider releasing their abandonware under some license which
would appease the license-worshipping faction of the community.  The
petition will be written and signed by the FreeCalypso community as a
whole, hence the process of preparing it will be carried out on the
FreeCalypso community mailing list:

https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community

Background: under different circumstances I would take no part in any
undertaking that legitimizes the religion of copyright and license
worship, but my own personal reason for attempting to reach out to TI
is that there is one piece of source which we are still missing.  If
this piece cannot be obtained, I'll be able to reconstruct it via
reverse engineering, but it may add an extra year or two to the project
schedule, hence I'm trying to leave no stone unturned in attempting to
find and obtain an original source for this piece (a version of L1 that
is correct for the Calypso chipset - not LoCosto, supports DSP ROM
version 36 and fits in the TCS211 firmware architecture - not TSM30).

Leaving no stone unturned includes asking TI, and if we as the
FreeCalypso community are going to ask them if they would be kind
enough to dig that source piece out of their very dusty archives for
us, it would be natural to ask for some sort of license to go along
with it as well.

However, I need to make some things clear, to avoid false expectations:

* I am not going to ask TI to release their code under "super-free"
  license terms like FSF would ask for.  If TI folks choose to release
  the software under such totally free license terms on their own
  volition, great, but I am not going to alienate them by demanding
  such.  In particular, if TI sets the license terms such that anyone
  who manufactures and sells new phones or modems with surplus TI
  chips and ships them to end users with TI-based firmware flashed in
  them (which is exactly what my end goal is) would have to pay TI a
  per-unit royalty on sold devices, I would have no problem with such
  terms.  The retail price for a newly made ultra-boutique Calypso
  phone or modem can't possibly be made any lower than $750 USD at the
  minimum, hence paying a small percentage of that to TI as royalty
  similar to what the mainstream phone makers paid Back Then would be
  reasonable.  I would also be OK with license terms that restrict the
  use of the software to hardware devices that were legitimately made
  with authentic TI-made chips and for which the original hardware
  manufacturer (be it Motorola in the distant past or yours truly in
  the present) paid TI whatever royalty was agreed upon at the time of
  manufacture.

* I need to make it crystal clear that if TI says No or ignores our
  petition altogether, I will NOT drop the project, and I shall
  continue it as an explicitly-illegal underground resistance effort.

M~