Date: 17 Mar 2000 09:25:26 +0100 From: Dag-Erling Smorgrav <des@flood.ping.uio.no> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: noslenj@swbell.net (Jay Nelson), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: The Merger, and what will its effects be on committers? Message-ID: <xzpaejy3sw9.fsf@flood.ping.uio.no> In-Reply-To: Terry Lambert's message of "Thu, 16 Mar 2000 22:58:10 %2B0000 (GMT)" References: <200003162258.PAA12226@usr09.primenet.com>
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Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> writes: > > > [Terry claims -core aren't treating Matt Dillon fairly] > > You know that's crap, Terry. Don't go there. You'll only start off a > > new flamewar. > And you quoting it back as "flamebait" won't... but now that > you have achieved your goal of goading me into justifying my > comments, let me lay it out for you: Let's please not have this discussion in public. > 2) Given that BSDI has binary-only drivers, the source for > which can not be released because of NDA, are the binary > object files, linkable to a FreeBSD kernel using the > process outlined in #1, going to be made available for > use in FreeBSD? Why should they? If they were written by BSDI employees, spending BSDI money, I see no reason why BSDI wouldn't be allowed to keep them proprietary. That's the whole point with using the BSD license instead of the GPL. > 3) Given new hardware under NDA, when the hardware is no > longer under NDA because the Linux camp have done our > jobs for us, and gotten documentation released, or have > written a driver without documentation, will the NDA > driver then be released? That's up to BSDI. IMHO, they'd be stupid not to, since they'd then have to keep maintaining it (at a cost) when it no longer gives them a commercial advantage because competitors can write equivalent or better drivers, so it'd simply make good business sense to release the driver and let the teeming millions (aka. the FreeBSD committers) maintain it for them. > 4) If the answer is "no", then will the powers that be permit > a driver written using the Linux driver as a reference to > be committed to the FreeBSD tree, as has occurred with > other drivers in the past? Why shouldn't they? How is BSDI going to stop a FreeBSD committer from committing such a driver to the tree? What makes you think BSDI will have dictatorial control over FreeBSD development? They won't. The alert reader will notice that the objections you've raised in questions 1 through 4 are the classical objections GPL advocates always raise against the BSD license (claiming that distributing software under the BSD license allows commercial vendors to hijack the software), and that the answers I've given you are the classical replies from the BSD advocates. > 5) Say a division of IBM uses FreeBSD, and a driver for > IBM hardware is written under NDA, and the answer to any > of #1, #2, or #3 is "no". Will the division of IBM be > forced to use BSDI, or not have a driver for hardware > obtained from a different division of IBM, with which the > first division has no political clout? I don't quite follow this. Who, in this hypothetical scenario, actually wrote the driver? DES -- Dag-Erling Smorgrav - des@flood.ping.uio.no To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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