On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 10:01:31AM -0800, Artem Kachitchkine wrote: > >I guess that Sun should address this - it should be clearly stated in > >a FAQ (for developers) what to do in such cases (not just - consult > >your lawyer). Is it permitted or not? What about GPL, BSD, ...? > > I think it's totally reasonable to put out some guidelines about issues > related to GPL drivers in OpenSolaris. It shouldn't be an official blessing > for all porting projects, not legal advise, but it is a frequently asked > question and there is a lot of misinformation out there. An answer that
We've tried to get our lawyers to do that and obviously we haven't been successful. Forget it; it's just not going to happen. There's a case-by-case open source legal review process for incoming code. If you want to contribute work to OpenSolaris based on something you got elsewhere (in this case, Linux), your sponsor will initiate that review and the right people at Sun will be able to determine whether your suggested changes are compliant with license terms. If approved, your contribution can be integrated. As others have pointed out, it's unreasonable to expect Sun to provide, at our expense, legal advice unrelated to OpenSolaris. > outlines the possible risks associated with bringing GPL drivers to non-GPL > domain would at least give developers an idea what they are dealing with. > Otherwise developers will receive "legal advise" from their peers on some > other forum and make misinformed decisions - saying it's their problem is > leaving them out in the cold. We're not the ones "saying it's their problem." It's the law that makes licensees solely responsible for compliance. If you want a more open-source-developer friendly legal system, write your Congressman or equivalent. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" Solaris Kernel Team "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!" _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
