From owner-freebsd-questions  Mon Oct 15  7:35:30 2001
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Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 10:35:07 -0400
From: Leo Bicknell <bicknell@ufp.org>
To: Doug Hass <dhass@imagestream.com>
Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>,
	Jim Bryant <kc5vdj@yahoo.com>,
	MurrayTaylor <taylorm@bytecraft.au.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG,
	freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG,
	Alfred Shippen <ashippen@metromatics.com.au>
Subject: Re: FYI
Message-ID: <20011015103507.B90657@ussenterprise.ufp.org>
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	Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>,
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	Alfred Shippen <ashippen@metromatics.com.au>
References: <002e01c15556$7d0c6fc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011015083441.10426E-100000@ims1.imagestream.com>
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In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011015083441.10426E-100000@ims1.imagestream.com>; from dhass@imagestream.com on Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 08:53:14AM -0500
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On Mon, Oct 15, 2001 at 08:53:14AM -0500, Doug Hass wrote:
> We are bound by third party agreements and are not allowed to release any
> more free code (legally) than we already have.  If we were not restricted
> by SBS, Trillium, and Rockwell (among others), we would release all of the
> code under GPL or lGPL.  These agreements do NOT prevent us from working
> with developers to support other platforms, though.  It only prevents the
> free release of portions of the code. 

Would your agreements allow you to provide resources to a small
number of developers (under NDA and all that of course) to produce
drivers that you would then release in binary form (eg a kernel
module) under a free license?

If you cannot release the source code to your drivers, can you
release hardware programming specifications (again, perhaps under
NDA) that allowed someone to develop an independant free licensed
driver?

-- 
Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org
Systems Engineer - Internetworking Engineer - CCIE 3440
Read TMBG List - tmbg-list-request@tmbg.org, www.tmbg.org

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