On 2/14/07, Jeff Rollin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Nah, RMS doesn't want this. A lot of `GPL people' don't want this
> at all.
>
> This deal is meant to divide.
>
And this discussion isn't? There are already plenty of divisions within the
FOSS world - between the F and OS of FOSS, between Linux and BSD, between
the various BSDs. It's not as if TdR started OpenBSD to continue
contributing to NetBSD, is it?
And yet when a driver is released under the BSD licence, which conflicts
with the GPL, when do we hear the bitching about it on the BSD side? Wait,
what's that? Oh, we don't?
Why does everyone want to turn this into a GPL vs. BSD license
discussion? It's not the license that is up for debate; rather it's
the fact that a driver was (will be?) produced under NDA and bridges
are now being burned.
It's not a matter of license; if a BSD licensed driver was produced
from docs acquired under NDA, the problem would be the same. The Linux
camp would have to reverse engineer our driver and we don't like that
having to be the only option for anyone.
The problem is that drivers are / will be produced *without open
disclosure of docs*. It's not that a BSD-licensed driver is better
for the community; it's the fact that a driver produced under open
docs _makes the docs available to the community for their own driver
implementations__. This is something no one should argue about. The
problem is the NDA, and the shortsightedness; not the license.
DS
